Minecraft: Respawn Point
by AmbiguouslyLiterate
Summary: Death doesn't matter in a world where you can respawn. But what if your spawn was a place you'd rather leave behind you?
1. Chapter 1: A Mostly Accidental Stabbing

_No bed, no spawn point…_

An open hand smeared across my face, trying in vain to wipe the sleep from my eyes. I looked at the heap of wood and dirt, sighing loudly to the empty woods. _Definitely a Cyrus-style house_ , I thought, _it's so garbage my name's practically on it._ I brushed my long dark brown bangs from the side of my face and shook the cloudiness from my head. I fished around in my pocket for torches, glowstone, lights of any kind; if I was gonna have a crappy shack, I could at least have a safe crappy shack. My hand brushed a door, a crafting table, all miniaturized the way things became when you broke them down. Objects the size of a person fitting between two fingers, hundreds stuffed into my pocket. Well, maybe not hundreds. I had what I could steal from the server's chest. I continued to finger through my inventory. _Iron ore…. Torches and… W- What?_ I pulled it out and stared at it in my palm. The wooden frame with stretched wool canvas stared back at me. _I—WHY DID I BRING A PAINTING?!_

My mind numbed and my eyes twitched with a powerful inward irritation. _I didn't bring enough wood to build a fort, or even proper tools, definitely no wool. But I brought a freaking painting?!_ My hand worked on its own, clearing a two block-tall space while the other placed a door, my face still strained in disbelief. I placed the torch I found on the doorway and walked in, shaking my head. Turned out running away from your server and everyone you've ever known was actually a bad idea. Who knew?

The dirt floor felt strange under my feet, more welcoming than it had the past few days. My feet had adjusted to the most dirt and crunching leaves of the forest floor, the wood and stone floors of my server feeling like a memory. I shut the door behind me and started grabbing around in my other pocket, leaning against one of my shed's walls. For the third night in a row, I dug for a bed in my pocket. I knew it wasn't there, but my hands still prodded and stretched at every crevice, hoping to find something, anything. Even just wool crushed down in some seam would be like a miracle right now. Sleeping in a bed after so many weeks of walking and wandering sounded so soothing. So serene. My hand came upon hard with jagged corners and with a strangely shaped frame and I pulled the miniaturized object from my pocket.

It was… A dispenser.

I yanked the door open and wound up my arm, giving the dispenser a good running pitch into the darkness of the woods. A startled zombie belch echoed out from somewhere deep in the void, a signal that I'd hit something. Something that only seemed to happen when I didn't want it to.

For so long been hoping to find another single player out in the woods. It'd been so lonely after I left my server, it would be nice just to find someone to walk and talk with. _But no, not tonight,_ I thought, grabbing the knob of my shed's door. A zombie pushed out from the shadow of a tree and another came shambling through a gap, a dispenser-shaped depression in its forehead.

"YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME, ZOMBIE? GRADE-A CHUMP RIGHT HERE," I yelled into the hazy dark, chucking the picture frame I had in my other pocket. It'd seemed I'd brought a whole stack, "COME AND GET ME!"

A lump traveled down my throat. _No bed, no spawn point…_ I thought to myself, the words running through my head again, just as they had been for weeks. I felt a prick of fear. A fear of dying. Not that I was scared of the Void between worlds. I'd gotten used to that a long time ago. Death was a shortcut to a spawn point where I didn't want to be anymore, back to the server. If I showed my face there again, I'd be instantly mobbed, driven out… I could only imagine what would happen if I dropped into the middle of town square, screaming like an idiot. Shuddering, I tried my best to shake off the image, focusing on the mob. And focusing on my mod.

At the very least, I was far from defenseless.

"TOO BAD FOR YOU GUYS, YOU STUMBLED ONTO THE ONE LOSER IN THIS FOREST WITH A MOD!" I screamed at the shambling masses, posing my arms like claws in the air, (which I immediately took down upon realizing how stupid I looked).

The first zombie stumbled out from the tree line, the distance between us finally closed. I dove forward, my hand spinning, barreling forward. It became steel, expanding into a conical drum that spun with an industrial ferocity and heat. I hadn't had my mod for long, only a few weeks, but as I saw my hand turn to metal, then shape into a drill as it collided with the zombie's face, I finally felt my fear dissipate. My drill arm spun, seemingly pulling me through the air as I burst through the first two zombies. My feet pivoted in the grass and I turned my other hand to a drill, swinging it down like a hammer and smashing the next zombie's boxy head to pulp. Moist dirt scraped under foot as I slid to a stop, my mod serving its purpose and then some. Thank Notch I copied it before leaving the server. Air rushed from my lungs as my body relaxed, my energy seemingly gone. But then there was a sound from the darkness. Leaves crunching under heavy feet.

Two skeletons appeared from the darkness, their eyes like white caves and their skinny fingers drawn around bowstrings. I pulled up my twin drills in front of my face, the metal blockade deflecting the first few arrows. Before they could prepare more shots, I dove behind a nearby tree, taking cover. Just out of reach. _Of course_ _I didn't bring any arrows either._ Instead of firing back I acted instinctively, or, in layman's terms, stupidly. I dove forward with both drills outstretched, managing to pile drive both skeletons while their arrows bounced off the curved metal. I banged the two drills together as I watched their bones turn to smoke and disappear. Finally, tonight was starting to feel good. All I had to do was ignore how easy it was to kill zombies and skeletons.

But then, eyes caught a familiar sight. Something moving in the darkness between the crossed shadows of trees. Lurching. Crawling. Its body was mostly hidden in the hazy dark of the woods, but when I saw its caved in eyes and its upside-down U-shaped mouth on the green canvas of a face, I instantly recognized it. A wave of terror pushed through me. If there was one thing that was going to send me back to the server, it would be a creeper. It hissed at me, swaying strangely as it weaved between the trees. One misstep and it would explode, taking everything within ten blocks with it. I couldn't just throw myself at it and expect to come out unscathed and I couldn't leave it prowling around to kill me in the morning. Killing it now was necessary, and I needed a plan.

"HEY!" I screamed, pointing my drill over the creeper's shoulder. The creeper turned, freeing me from its gaze. So it wasn't a _great_ plan, sue me, "LOOK OVER THERE!"

As the creeper twisted back to me, I spun on my heel, drill pulled back near my stomach, retracting it like a piston. My hooked the creeper's abdomen, stalling for a minute before bursting forward and sending it flying. I pulled back my arm, eyes closed, smirk stretching across my face as the creeper collided with a nearby tree, a pained _"OW!"_ knocked from its lungs. Its voice was distinctly female, as was the groan that wearily dragged from its collapsed form. I gave a satisfying pump of my arm, the forest finally clear—finally silent—for the first time in a while. I could feel safe for a moment. Able to sleep peacefully. Well, about as peacefully as you could sleep on dirt.

I stared over at the shadow of the creeper up against the tree. Waiting for it to despawn, to turn to smoke and disappear. But I just kept waiting. _Does it still have more health?_ I wondered. Something was wrong. Something about the scream, something about the sound, something about everything about the creeper. I saw it reach up a weak, pale hand. A human hand.

"CRAP!"

Immediately, Iran towards the girl, my mind bursting with questions and devoid of answers. My hands returned to normal, their shapes along with my confidence. It was a terrible scene; blood splattered the front of the tree and the grass underneath her body, her turquoise-blue hair splayed around her face, numb and cold, lips hanging open. The creeper face I had seen was just a design painted on the front of a hood, now crumpled against the bark of the tree she lay jaggedly against. _Who goes around in the forest sneaking up on people in a creeper costume?!_ I screamed in my mind. Even if it was her fault for sneaking on an unstable loser with a drill arm, it was still me who impaled her, and I couldn't just shrug that off. My hands trembled in the air, my mind failing once more to catch up in the time I needed it to.

Her face seemed to glow in the moonlight, the moon glinting off her lip ring and glowing off of her bright green hoodie. A hole the size of my drill bit took up a huge chunk of the right side of her abdomen, the grass beneath it clearly visible. She was the only person I'd seen for weeks. Some innocent, _though very dumb_ , girl who went around scaring people dressed as a creeper. And I'd left a giant gaping hole in her. Things were going so… Almost well up till now! I bent downwards, mouth struggling to work with my mind. Sentences impossible to form. If she was dead however, she'd already have disappeared, despawned in a cloud of smoke, so I tried my best to speak to her. I only managed to sputter out an _"Are you okay, weirdo?"_ Which I repeated over and over again.

She was a griefer, a player devoted to nothing but causing chaos and well… Grief for other players. Most of them destroyed creations other players worked hours on; burning down homes, demolishing towns, crushing monuments, and killing others just for the sick thrill. For a joke. Other players however, like this idiot, just liked the scare. The reactions. _I hope you got what you wanted,_ I thought, gritting my teeth.

Before I could lower myself close enough to check her wounds or touch her body, she sat straight up. It was like her torso had an invisible spring, shooting upwards at an immediate 90° angle. I flew backwards, shrieking at the sight. For a moment I wondered if I had injured her at all, or if I'd just grazed her and she was putting on this strange show in an attempt to guilt me. But the hole in her side was perfectly hollow and oozing with red pixels. She was unfazed, her eyes half-lidded like someone who'd just gotten out of bed. Tired, curious, but perfectly content. The girl turned to me, her eyes blue as the night sky. Blood streamed from the side of her open mouth, which she stuck her tongue out of.

"P- Pranked ya..!"

I sat frozen. The fear and concern gone, my mind fuzzy as I stared at her dumb smile and jaunty bend in her spine. All that filled my mind was a genuine confusion. My brain grabbed at straws, fragments of sentences struggling to form. _What's happening? What's wrong? Who are you?_

"Wh- What's wrong with you?"

She beamed at me, winking with finger guns blasting, "A lotta things probably, I'm a creeper after all. We're a little nutty," Her hands fell to her sides, one landing in a puddle of blood. She patted her stained clothing with her hand, moving it up till she found the gaping hole in her body. She barely seemed to register it, "How was my delivery though? Was I good? I spooked you didn't I!"

"Of course you did, you freaking maniac!"

As I gazed at the scene in horror, the creeper girl proceeded to poke into the exit wound on her back, while also inserting a finger from the front, seemingly trying to see if she could make her fingers meet in the middle. I felt sick, clasping a hand over my mouth. _Relax Cyrus_. I thought to myself _. At least she's okay. She may be nuts, but she's okay_. _We need to get her to safety,_ _out of the forest. Get her to my shed before an actual creeper shows up._ Unanswered questions screamed through my mind, but I tried to push them out, my only priority becoming getting her to a safe place. It was the least I could do for her after all.

"Hehe… You actually thought I was a creeper, didn't you?" The girl asked again, her form wavering. Her eyes were starting to flicker. She sighed sleepily. The girl had been fighting the effects of her injury like a demon before now, but now they seemed to be kicking in. The girl's body began to sway, "That's good…"

The girl fell back hard, her head knocking against the wood blocks of the tree behind her as she fell, her body falling limp once more in the grass. I stared for a moment, waiting for her to get up as silence fell around me like gravel. I poked her ankle, the limb swiveling in the grass, barely twitching at my touch. She giggled, but didn't speak.

Before I wasn't sure if she was human, but now… I didn't think she could tell either.

Sounds began to trickle out from the depths of the forest. They were quiet, distant enough to be safe, but I couldn't count on that for long. I stood up, turning away from the girl and springing back towards my shed, freezing only as the door caught in my hand. My body was stiff for a moment, but I turned and looked at the girl, laying cold in the grass. I imagined her being taken by the zombies, waking just in time to watch as a spider wrapped her in its webs, or as a skeleton took aim between her eyes. My hand clamped the door tight and I bit down on my lip.

Dying may not have mattered to her—it didn't matter to most, given you can respawn—but the thought of her being trapped, unable to fight back. I couldn't handle that. The sight of someone ganged up on by this world, bullied by its inhabitants. It was too familiar to me.

I took hold of the girl's legs and began dragging her across the dirt, her body leaving a red line in the grass like a soggy paint brush. Trying hard not to gag, I turned my face towards the shack, _Just a few more blocks to go_. I cleared the shadows of the just as the moss green of a zombie began to poke its head from the darkness beyond, close enough now to come into sight. It didn't scare me, but a sound from below did.

"So why didn't you hit me with a sword back there, nameless guy?"

I nearly dropped her right there. I looked over my shoulder at the supposedly-unconscious creeper girl, her head now tilted towards me as her body sloped up towards me at an unnatural angle.

"I'm not nameless, my name is Cyrus," I corrected, still pulling her through the grass. To be honest, maybe I should have left her there. If she could survive a hit like that after all, maybe she could survive a zombie attack. Although, it wasn't hard to imagine her clipping through the ground or something equally bizarre if I actually did end up setting her down, "And I call this my copy mod. Right now I'm using a drill mod I took from someone in my old server, but I can copy others and–"

"Why not use a sword though…?" She persisted, her voice trailing off sleepily. I guess her consciousness was temporary after all, "A sword probably would have killed me harder…" I sighed, resigning rather than continuing to argue with an insane person.

"Well… I'm not very good with a sword. Or most things in general… Mods help."

She nodded thoughtfully, her eyes half-lidded. I questioned if any of my words were actually being processed or if she was just nodding by reflex. I budged the shed door open with my shoulder, pulling the girl in and resting her body along the wall. I only now realized how much space the two of us took up in here. It felt like the two of us were sharing a single cubical atom of air.

"I'm San by the way…" She said breathily, her body waving like a leaf in the wind once more. I smiled, "Hi San." Though it felt like I was talking to a living dummy. Maybe it was from the accident, but her consciousness seemed to waver more with each passing moment. A realization dawned in my mind, then quickly fell as it formed, crashing against my heart, my stomach, quivering in my legs before crashing in the grass below. The realization that if she died, I'd be alone again. It was a strange thing to fear, considering I'd been wandering the woods for the better part of the last month, but nevertheless it failed to disappear, only growing as I stared at the weak smirk that faded into her lips.

I fashioned some bandages from paper and string, wrapping them around her midsection and fiercely tightening them. "Yeah, keep that in there," I muttered as I trapped the wound, "No one wants to see any more of that." My hands soon found a rhythm, the motion becoming easier the more bandages I laid down, though I would shiver at the touch of her skin. The contact was overwhelming. I didn't realize until then how nice it was to be around another human being.

"Don't you have any meat I could plug up this wound with?"

I almost choked on my spit.

"N- No." I stuttered, pinning the end of the bandage in place. The easiest and least painful way to heal of course, was food. Even if you shattered you femurs taking fall damage, or had a limb cut off by a sword, you just needed to eat some bread and you're back on your feet, your bones just naturally snapping back into place, flesh filling the empty spaces. It was almost scary how much an expert builder could do on a full stomach, most of them leaping off of structures and shattering their legs just to serve as a quick way down. So it was only fitting I'd forgot to bring on this trip along with my beds, spare wood, and survival instinct, "I just have tools and a few random blocks."

"But… You brought paper and string!" San laughed, pulling her hoodie back down over her midsection, seeing that I had finished. She placed a hand in the bloody hole I'd opened in her hoodie, treating the drill hole like it was a front pocket, "What else did you bring?"

I reached into my inventory, more willing to humor her than explain something I wouldn't get to finish talking about. My hand hooked around a flat rectangular object and I tossed it forward. The painting landed against a nearby wall, the watercolor image growing to full size on its length. San tried to contain herself but her laughter was visibly building in her round cheek, audible shards breaking out in small snorts.

"Yeah… I'm really not good at this." I said, rolling into a sitting position. A smirk defied me, creeping onto my face.

"What like, everything?" She questioned, spitting out a laugh. _You're one to talk,_ I thought, _Running out into the woods and getting stabbed by strangers._

I nodded, the smirk on my face breaking into a wide smile. "Pretty much!" I replied, my own face strained by a wide grin for the first time in nearly a month. San laughed with me, her booming voice hugging feeling like it was hugging me tightly, squeezing me, and shaking me around. It may not have been the first time in weeks that I'd smiled, but it was definitely the first time in weeks I'd felt at home. Even if it was with a suicidal idiot. Of course, stupid was something we had in common. Getting lost in the endless woods, needlessly provoking mobs, _forgetting to bring beds_. I was dumb and had a dumb companion, and there was something comforting in that. The forest felt strangely empty, the empty forest cradling us two idiots as we laughed. The sky coming through the small portholes on the door began to glow, turning orange as a new sun rose.

"So… How you feeling?" I asked San. It was a question I tried to ask her before, but one that she never seemed to stay awake long enough for.

"I'm okay, just… Tired." She said, scratching her head, "Starving probably. Feels like there's a big hole in my stomach."

I coughed out a laugh, but she just stared at me with her same stupid smile. Maybe she'd already forgotten about the wound. I wished I could be that scatterbrained.

"Let me take you home then. You said you had a server right?"

San nodded, smiling brightly at me and thanking me with the little consciousness she had left before beginning to drift again. "Weebtown," She whispered, "about 20 chunks east."

I wanted to let out a _Really?_ Upon hearing the name, but she had already fallen back her vague state of unconsciousness. I took it as my cue to move, grunting as I put her arm around my shoulders and lifted from beneath her legs, heaving her onto my shoulders. My legs quivered, and I nearly dropped her, San snickering to herself all the way.

Shifting her body, I managed to get her arms around my neck as she tightened her legs around my waist. She was like a 200 pound backpack. Before long, I'd heaved her upwards and budged my way through the front door, my body heavy and the light of dawn on my face. It definitely wasn't the way I imagined I'd meet someone out in the woods between servers. Much less the way that I'd get a travelling companion. But something about it seemed right. It was just like this world of Minecraft. Strange, unnecessarily startling, and just as confusing as it was natural. Something was comforting about that. And about her.

"Weebtown…" I said aloud. A horrible name, to be sure. But it was a destination. And I hadn't had one of those in a while.

Even if I'm the one who injured her in the first place, I was glad to actually be able to help her. Maybe I'd stick in her memory. No longer the third-person-from-the-left in a crowd but a person she'd actually remembered if she actually ended up dying. Though, I'd rather prevent that. Maybe then I'd have someone rooting for me. Someone to add to my list of contacts after all of the others sent me into the woods. San pulled herself onto my back, securing herself. She pulled her arms around my neck, tightly yet somehow softly holding me. "Hi." She said with a giggle, falling back unconscious almost immediately. "Hi." I replied to the vacant air, laughing to myself. _No bed,_ I thought _, but at least I have a crazed, starving backpack._

Before long, she'd pointed me in the direction of her server and I started walking. Leaving the shack and the painting and everything in that part of the forest behind. There was a quiet anxiety that came with the beginning of a new journey, even if it was just a change in direction. A pit in my gut began to grow, threatening to pull San and I down with it. I tried to shrug the feeling off and keep going, but it only seemed to hang on my heels, spreading across my feet like frostbite and only growing with every step. But interrupting the darkness, driving off the anxiety, was San's voice. Mumbling sleepily. But not like before, it was like she was dreaming. The strange girl continued to talk in her sleep, her eyes lidded and head thumping on my shoulder as I tread through the forest's dry grass. I had given up on replying, any retorts or questions falling on deaf ears. She said something about "her," I guess someone she needed to find. Or was heading back to. I listened closer, leaning in, hoping to hear more details. Any information at all, but she fell silent again.

I released a heavy breath, training my eyes on the glowing horizon. As zombies burned away and the shadows of the forest receded under the trees, my chest began to feel lighter, the girl on my back feeling as natural as my coat and scarf. Maybe once we got to her server, she'd even explain to me what in the Nether her deal was. But that was for later.

"Here we go, I guess!" I said aloud, lifting my head, a stupidly confident grin on my face. Regardless of its connotations, I threw my head back and shouted her server's name to the sky, knowing that wherever and whatever it was, it would be better than piddling around in the dark woods. Finally, I had somewhere I wanted to be.

"Onward, to Weebtown!"


	2. Chapter 2: The Power of Anime

We came to a wide stone wall. It was both the first monument to civilization I'd seen in a month, and one of the biggest stone structures I'd ever seen. Where the forest parted, I could see the wall's length extending infinitely either way into the forest. Pink wool fell in fluffy tapestries from the top of the wall, shreds of its bright color falling loose and trailing across the gravel road like leaves. Just beyond the wall you could see the tops of castles, not like the stone and brick castles in parts of my old server, but ornate buildings with rooftops curved and plated like the backs of dragons, peaking in triangular green and mahogany arches. My feet moved on their own, pulling us towards the structures. San snored on my back, still conveniently unconscious. I wondered when–or if–she'd wake up; whether I'd have to carry her to her home in the server or whether I'd be able to put her down and walk. But it wouldn't matter.

We had encountered mobs on the journey there, but for some reason I couldn't spawn my drills. I chalked it up to exhaustion, or at least something like that. Maybe I copied San's hunger, I thought. Though, I had to wonder if San was a mod user herself… If I'd maybe copied something I couldn't use.

Copying mods happened by touch, and happened automatically. I… Didn't actually have any control over it. Call it my weakness. Take the drills for example. I copied them from a griefer who had been attacking my server–or, my ex-server I guess–but I had to touch them or at least make some kind of contact, so… Basically for my power to work, I need to be punched in the face. Not a great mod in my opinion, but it's what I had to work with. At the very least, I wouldn't have to worry about it here. I just had to get through those gates and–

"STOP!"

"YAMERO!"

Two voices split the cool serenity of the woods, the rustle of leaves falling silent, hushed by their commanding tones. The guards strode forward, stepping in sync as their feet crunched the gravel beneath them, their faces coming into view.

One wore a black jacket that flowed around him almost like a cape, his long black hair falling back from his face in jagged shards. As he neared however, my intimidation began to melt into bemusement. He had belts EVERYWHERE _._ Two crammed into the loops of his pants, several wrapped around his arm, and two in an X across his chest, almost like the straps for a sword sheathe. But they weren't holding anything. In fact, they all appeared to be completely pointless. As were the two belts on his left leg and the leather wristbands that poked out from his sleeves. He was the peak of superfluous; the fashion polices' most wanted.

"State your username and your business here, normie." Belts glared, his foot planted dramatically in the gravel.

" **Cyrustheslayer**." I spoke quietly, trying to keep my voice calm. _What in the Nether is a normie?_ I asked to myself, somehow split equally between fear of authority and baffled glee. I realized quickly that I was over my head.

"I have this girl, I think she's one of you guys?"

"HOSUTESU!" The other guard cried, reaching for a sword from her side. I flinched back, clutching San tightly. The guard drew closer, barking at me in a language I'd never heard before. My lips searched for a response, but there was nothing I could really say. I squeezed San's legs, hoping this didn't go the way I figured it would go. The way it always goes with modders.

The girl had long pale-green hair tied in a frayed ponytail, her bangs splayed in front of her eyes. A necklace of large purple beads hung around her neck, dangling about the sandy tunic she wore. She carried a bundle of blades at her side; 3, 5, no, 7– Swords spilled out of the sash she wore around her midsection, at least ten of them sitting in their sheathes, hanging in the tight fabric. Two more swords were mounted on her back, my mind spinning as I tried to count them all. She pulled the two blades from their sheathes, one in each hand. Her eyes were piercing, merciless.

"You're right, Zolo," The guard with the ridiculous belts bellowed, "This looks like a hostage situation."

 _Excuse me?!_ I looked to the unconscious girl on my back, then to Zolo and the belt man standing on the path in front of me, each taking up their own battle stance. I hiked San upwards on my back, my feet moving almost automatically backwards. I glared at San as I tried to shake her awake.

"I- I think there's been some kind of mistake, I found this girl in the woods, I'm trying to take her back to her server."

Belts glared at me, his hands glowing with an ominous light. "Why don't we hear that from her, then?" He questioned, stabbing a finger at the air between us. From where I was standing, I was just a skinny loser in an oversized coat who wore scarves in overly-warm weather– probably the least intimidating, least threatening person you could encounter. What harm could I do? Well, I did impale a stranger with a magic drill… but that's beside the point!I began to sweat, nudging San as I stepped lightly away from them. She still didn't seem to want to wake up. I swallowed, speaking quietly.

"Well, she's unconscious because she uh… Lost a lot of blood when I stabbed her."

The two stepped forward. I looked anxiously at the swordswoman's abundance of swords. The ornateness of their sheathes, the sheer amount she was carrying, I knew they had to be a mod. A strange confidence burned in the back of my mind. Maybe I could copy them. Use them against her. As I struggled to strategize however, doubts began to consume my mind. _Would I even be able to touch her swords without getting impaled on them? While carrying a girl on my back?_ And that's only if my mod worked the way I thought it did. It didn't exactly come with an instruction booklet. But just then, the swordswoman stepped forward, bringing her sword level with my nose. I pushed forward slightly, hoping to nudge it, but missed. The swordswoman looked confused, but dove forward, swinging her swords at me with swift, deadly accuracy.

"Please, I don't want any trouble–" I shook, lowering San for a moment. The swordswoman must have thought I was going to drop her and run because she dashed forward, swords slicing through the air. I fell back trying to dodge it, a stinging pain lashing my chest as the steel tore my flesh. I grit my teeth, San falling to the gravel behind me as I spilled onto the ground, the gravel scratching my hands.

The woman spun a sword around her palm as if testing her own dexterity, squinting at me. She replaced her other sword, removing a new one that was untainted by my blood. Pain gripping my chest as my shoulders pivoted, I tried to rise lifting San over my shoulders in a fireman's carry, holding my hand out in front of me. It took getting sliced by her katana… But I had it. Air swirled around my hand and energy flowed through my body and into my wrist, warming it. I felt solid matter push against the inside of my palm as the sword manifested. The swordswoman saw what was happening and rushed forward, only for a perfect copy of her katana to appear between us, blocking her blow.. The steely blade bit rang like a bell as it collided with her sword, my blade knocked from my hand, both of us thrown off our balance.

 _"K- kushō–!"_

She swung another blade at me, trying to straighten herself, her body moving just as fast as before, if not faster. I moved my arm just in time, blocking the blow with another new blade, the edge cracking and its tip flying off behind her. Her eyes flashed, her hands grabbing for the next pair of swords. Teeth gritted and her face strained, she seemed more frustrated than defensive, angrier with herself than she was with me. Instinctively, I pushed my sword arm forward, the arc catching the side of her head just as her blade came against my cheek. Energy seemed to swell around the sword, bursting as I thrust it forward and sending a shock through the air. The blow threw her body into the dirt beside the gravel path, the swordswoman grunting as she collided with the ground. I spun the sword in my hand, (nearly dropping it) trying my best to look suave and powerful as I hoist San farther up on my back.

"Seriously, I'm not here to hurt anyone!" I cried, trying to argue my innocence while standing over someone I'd bludgeoned, "Can't we just act like civilized players and talk this out?"

The belt boy stepped forward, putting a hand in front of his face, fingers spread, his other limbs thrown out in a bizarre stance. "I am Jortaro…" He shouted, his outstretched hands forming fists that glowed with a red fire. Jortaro pinned me with a dark glare. His hands flashed, becoming a pair of glowing red boxing gloves with golden spiked knuckles, "And in the name of anime," He said, thrusting a fist forward in a menacing pose, "I will punish you!"

Jortaro shot towards me, his fist sailing past my head like an assassin's arrow, air rushing past me as atmosphere rushing past me to fill the vacuum left by the attack. There was more power in his arm than anything I'd ever experienced, mod or otherwise, but he seemed to be flailing around wildly, his fists exploding in every direction as he shouted " _ORA ORA ORA ORA!_ " into my face. I spawned two swords from my hands, Zolo's swords, formed like an X to block the impact. Before he threw out his next punch, I swung one of the katanas, the blade gliding through the weeb's arm the same way it sailed through the air. Almost no resistance. They were more than just normal iron swords. A stream of red shot across my vision as I severed the weeb's right hand at the wrist, his red-spraying boxing glove flying into the dirt beside us. Jortaro staggered back, grabbing his reduced appendage.

" _N- No! I've been– Non-fatally wounded! Wh- What if I bleed out!"_

And yet, the guard was smiling, his staggering labored and dramatic. Was he really joking around while he had a hand missing? _DO WEEBS EVEN FEEL PAIN?!_ With his boxing glove still on, he tightened the notches in the belts on his right arm, stopping the blood flow and preventing any further blood loss.. "HA! As if an honorable weeb would die in such a manner."

"DOES ANYONE BUT ME FEEL PAIN?!" I wailed. Belts scoffed at me.

The weeb grimmaced at me, his eyes burning with homicidal intent, "You'll never understand anime. No outsiders will"

He threw out his left fist, the X-shaped swords two narrow to block the impact, the punch colliding with my stomach with tremendous power. My feet skidded across the gravel as I struggled to keep my balance, the reverberating force of his attack sending dull aches through my body. In addition, my counter-balance was slumping. San was falling down my back.

As Jortaro prepared for his next assault, metallic clicks sounded from behind me as the swordswoman staggered to her feet, pulling four swords out of their sheathes. Her head was still bleeding from my drill's impact, but her eyes were straight, sharper than ever. She held two swords in her mouth and two in her hands, dropping two swords so that they fell on her sandals between her toes. In a way she was the most ridiculous and most terrifying thing I'd ever seen. A weeb's maximum potential. I thought I saw something behind her, a shadow of something. In that moment, I thought it was part of her. A dark entity, like Herobrine but cast in a smoky form of purple and black. It was only then, as terror crawled under the surface of my skin like insects and the cold miasma behind her stared into me that I realized…

 _There was no way I could fight my way out of this…_

 _"Omae wa mou shindeiru…"_

 _I was already dead._

With a dual scream of battle, two gatekeepers dove towards us, a shrill metallic sound filling the air behind me and a flurry of fists filling my sight. My arms stuck out in front of me, guarding my front out of instinct, failing to do anything to guard my back. I hoped that San would be safe since she was from this server, that maybe she'd even be a good shield, but I didn't know that for sure. Maybe they were willing to kill her, given she'd just respawn there anyway. I clasped my eyes tightly shut, my arms tightened, followed every other muscle in my body. My entire being felt like a brittle stone lined with cracks. I waited for the attack, waited for a scream of pain or an instinct to dodge. Waiting to shatter. But suddenly–

"TP **SLEEPINGSW0RDZ0L0** AND **「** **JORTAROKUJORT** **」** TO ME"

A voice shattered the sky, silencing the swords, the wind, the leaves, my heart– everything. It spoke with a roaring, furious authority, like the cry of a mother bear. It spoke above everything, the command seemingly stealing the breath from the air. Some time passed with my eyes clamped shut, too shaken by the words to understand them fully. It was only after I pried them open to see the empty ground on either side of me that I realized it was an admin command. Words, like a spell, given to only the most powerful figure in a server. Words that had wrested the two gatekeepers from the air. My legs felt shaky, unstable as I pivoted around, searching for the source of the voice.

I looked up the path, immediately stunned. The purple shadow I had seen behind Zolo, the dark miasma, was actually a person. She had glowing purple eyes and wearing a heavy purple sweater, eyes glinting behind a pair of round glasses, her face hidden in a cloud of dark brown hair. Both of the gatekeepers were slumped at her sides, fidgeting as she held them by their collars like disobedient children.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, my mind raced to prepare an apology, hundreds of escape routes and pleas clouding my mind, my legs wobbling. I tried to choke out an apology without my mind made up, garbled parts of words fruitlessly spilling out. The purple glow began to dissipate, but the admin's eyes still burned with impatience. _Words, Cyrus, words!_

"S- so, I know what you may be thinking–"

I was knocked over by an unknown force, falling forward into the gravel.

"Slenda!"

Chalky white dust engulfed my vision and I struggled to pull my head up, only to see San– _incrediblyconscious_ – dashing towards the admin. I gritted my teeth, trying to reconcile that she was shaken awake by the battle, or maybe she just happened to wake from her slumber by some sort of coincidence. But nothing seemed to justify it. I coughed up dust, looking down the path, admin recoiled, dropping the two gatekeepers as the creeper girl dove into her, wrapping her arms around her as the two crashed to the gravel path, San laughing gleefully as they did.

A shadow stretched over me as I rose to a sitting position. I turned, hands curled into unintimidating, bony fists, only to see a smiling girl bent over me, her hand extended. She wore a leather jacket over a pine green hoodie, her hair a burnt shade of brown, as dark as the leather, dangling from the sides of her face and tied in a dry ponytail behind her head. Her skin was darker than mine, an oak to my acacia, her lips full and pulled into a hospitable smile. Her eyes burned with smoke and embers.

"Sorry about that," She sighed, lifting me to my feet, "I'm Roxxie, one of the operators here. I hope San didn't cause you any trouble."

"Well…"

"What in the Nether are you both doing?!" The admin boomed, knuckles white at her sides. Roxxie and I turned to watch her, "You two were so reckless, you could have hurt San, you know that she can't–!"

The admin, Slenda, caught sight of me and immediately clasped her lips. She gave me a snide, secretive look before looking back to her subordinates and barking further condemnations at them. Her voice was jagged now, cracks of anger and exasperation evident. She was less the roaring bear I had heard calling out the admin command and more of a yelping dog. Though an admin didn't have to be especially imposing to be scary to me. Just having the commands was enough.

"Like killing San would be a huge loss," Jortaro scoffed, just loud enough for me to hear him, "We'd only be losing the griefer who tries to blow up the server every other week."

Zolo nodded weakly in agreement, though she seemed to be hiding her expression from the admin. Slenda gave him a look of death, clutching the creeper girl close to her. San didn't seem phased though. And, if I'm gonna be honest, _I don't think she can be._

"Come on, let's go," Slenda ordered, tugging San through the gates, "You're gonna open up a fresh bottle of sake and mellow out with me." San stuck her tongue out, saluting Slenda.

San looked over her shoulder, waving at me as she left down a fork in the gravel path. _You're welcome._ I chuckled, waving back. Slenda gave her operator a signal, Roxxie nodding and motioning for me to follow her as San and Slenda vanished in the server's buildings. Roxxie patted me on the back of the shoulder, nudging me away through the gates and past the glares of the two gatekeepers. Even though I was welcomed by their superiors, there still seemed to be something seething in them. More than just defeat.

"San and Slenda are… A pair." The operator smiled, her dark brown eyes flickering with embarrassment, "Slenda's been cleaning up after San's messes ever since we found her. I can only hope she didn't trouble you too much."

"Found?" I asked, trying to avoid getting into me and San's scuff.

Roxxie shook her head. "Funny enough, Slenda stumbled upon her in the forest one day. Wandering around, half naked. She was hissing at players, animals and, uh… Trees." She giggled, looking nostalgically down the road. _That sounds about right_ , I shook my head, _At least she's consistently insane._

"You have such a cool mod!" She cheered, looking down at my arms, her eyes blazing, "So you were probably a dungeon crawler in your old server right? Or some kinda PvP master? Girlfriend probably thought you were pretty cool…"

I hesitated, my face hot.

I looked down at my hand, a smile creeping onto my face. My mod was almost like an old friend now, even though I'd only had it for about a month. Sure it was an old friend that magically transformed into a drill and sometimes swords that I used to kill zombies, but then again those are the best kind, right? I remembered the first fight I used it, in the fight that got me kicked out of my server– the fight with the griefer. I thought of the fights with mobs, endermen, spiders, zombies, all things which I had been terrified of all falling easily to my new weapon. And then there was San. The only conflict I didn't I didn't plan for, but the only one with a real positive result. I couldn't help but chuckle.

"I wasn't good at much before the mod honestly," I said, shrugging, "Just hung around in the spawn town library. But now I guess it's good at getting me friends."

"Or getting you into trouble," Roxxie smiled, holding up a hand. She was more than right, though the line struck me as odd. She only knew about the fight I got in with the operators… Right? Not my old server? A stream of thin smoke, soon lit by a feathery wisp of flame drifted upwards from her sleeve, snaking around her wrist and sitting in her hand, "You'd think I'd be doing a lot more with this fire mod I have, but all I used it for in my old server was griefing and pranks. And uh, they weren't very good pranks."

Roxxie giggled as she spun on her heel and continued down the path in front of us, her feet clapping up the gravel beneath. Weebs stared out at us from the alleyways beside the path. There was something dutiful in their expressions. Something defensive. An occasional child would run out in front of us, yelling something like "KAWAII" or "DOKI DOKI" before sailing back into the crowds. Some weebs fought with swords in the clearings behind buildings. It seemed that conflict was a weeb's natural state.

A smile crept onto my face as I watched two weebs run across a nearby rooftop, arms flapping dramatically behind them. Seeing insane sights and characters like this, I remembered what I liked about big servers like this, and I guess the world of Minecraft in general; everything around you is a part of someone's imagination. Every ornate rooftop, every ridiculous weapon, all of the strange styles and languages, they were all something that started in someone's imagination. Something that someone believed in. Even the mods, though no one was truly sure where they come from, seemed to come from our dreams, our wishes. I still remembered dreaming of mine, swimming in the darkness of my mind, a voice offering from the void. I looked down at my hand, remembering when I planned for this to be my saving grace, the power that would make me a hero _._ It was only just starting to do me good.

"Don't be afraid to use that here by the way," Roxxie said, an odd sweetness in her voice, "We could use someone to set some players straight here. Especially someone new."

Though we had mostly walked through grey, blocky buildings up until this point, the spawn area was filled with the ornate castles and towers I'd seen from the outside wall, the weeb citadel finally meeting my expectations. I could see the pink woolen clouds that surrounded the city more clearly now, that I had just barely seeing poking over the walls. They weren't wool however. They were trees. Modded trees known as cherry blossoms. In the exact center of the server was a creeper statue, its head topped with long blue hair. _I may never understand weebs,_ I thought, looking up at the blue-haired effigy, _but if they can make something like this, they couldn't be all bad._

A laugh sprung from my cheek, the image of me as some kind of cop or peacekeeper more ludicrous than anything, even the weebs. A Cyrus dawning huge shoulder pads and shades stood in my mind's eye, a picture frame in hand. DON'T MAKE ME USE THIS. He boomed, glaring at the masses.

"I can hardly regulate myself. Heck, I'm only here because I accidentally ran through one of your players. I'm going to spend most of my time here mod-free if that's alright with you."

Her face turned cold for a moment, eyes falling unamused and her mouth flat, "That's fine." She flashed a thumbs-up paired with a grin, "You don't have to be a part of it if you don't want to. I understand how people from Vanillakings are, I know a few."

Her words fell like a slop of snow off a rooftop; slow, quiet, but landing with a cold, sharp thud. So she _did_ know me. I never mentioned I was from Vanillakings. I'd avoided mentioning the name before now just for the sake of leaving anew. For a fresh start. But she knew where I came from. We walked forward in silence for a few moments, the sun peeking through the breaks in-between buildings as we walked into the square.

The operator showed me to an empty room where I could stay while in the server. I hadn't thought about it in earnest before that point, but looking down at the soft linens on the bed and the warm glow of the room's redstone lantern, I realized how much I just wanted a home. There was something I still couldn't shake about the server, how Roxxie seemed to know me, and how the guards seemed to act towards their leader, but as the soft linen of my mattress filled my view, all seemed to drift away. I'll get the answers I needed in the morning.


	3. Chapter 3: Waifu Ruckus

"These are the crop fields. They aren't maintained especially well… The players we assign to work in them usually ditch to rp or go dungeon crawling."

It had been a few days since San and I had arrived in Weebtown. San quickly went her own way after she was healed up; the aloof creeper girl venturing into the server to go cause trouble in a way that I wasn't surprised was her standard. I was left to explore the server on my own, only occasionally bumping into her or Roxxie as I walked the streets, the pink petals of cherry blossoms blowing around my feet.

"Here are the mines. There used to be a systematic branch mining system here but now everyone just does what they want. A lot of people have even built little secret bases inside the mines, making other players pay tolls. It's… A thing."

Weebtown was more like my home server than I'd expected; there were fields of crops, areas squared away for mining and private building, and even a few cool landmarks like the anime-haired creeper that towered over the server's spawn point. The major difference however, was the mods. My home server, the server where I spawned, was "vanilla," meaning that mods were outlawed, although that didn't stop the mod users that forced their way in. Either way, anyone who used a mod was seen as an outsider, which was in stark contrast to the streets I was walking now. Modded weapons, armor, special blocks, and plants littered the server, players walking by them as if they were a normal part of the world, as if they hadn't been brought into existence through an otherworldly power. It was a welcome change, even if I had to see players walking around with the occasional overly-graphic body pillow.

"What are all of these for?" I asked, looking around at the legion of bland stone buildings surrounding us. The admin chuckled.

Slenda had been taking me on a tour of the server, both of us hoping that I'd be able to find a place there, or at the very least help me socialize. Slenda didn't seem keen on either, her eyes cold and her voice tired during most of her walk. Though, I suppose I'd be just as broken if I had to run this mixed deathtrap and playground barely disguised as a functioning society. When we reached the edge of the spawn town the ornate buildings and semi-organized gave way to a sea of grey and pale colors, all belonging to buildings of nearly identical structure. They all had a similarly shaped main building with wings to either side, the walls lined with windows. Every roof had a small walkable area with a fence around it and in the dirt beside the buildings' bases there were chalk lines for some kind of sports. The only thing differentiating the buildings were the signs in front of them, all written in that indecipherable weeb language.

"Oh, these? They're all high schools."

"ALL OF THEM?!" I questioned, my mind spinning, "B- But, why?!"

Slenda shook her head, letting out a weary sigh. It didn't seem like it was the first time she'd had to break this to someone.

"That's anime!" She said with a weak smile and a flash of her hands, "To get to all of the beauty and nuance, you need to dig through a bunch of high schools and horrible waifus."

Weebtown was the peak of superfluous, taking every unnecessary excessive element they possibly could and finding a way to squeeze it into every day server life… _But high schools?! What's so exciting about high schools?!_ Most servers didn't even build schools in the first place since most players spawn in with a decent amount of knowledge. But this server had what looked like _thousands._ It felt like being on the top of a mountain where the air thinned, except here you were left gasping for standards and moderation rather than oxygen. I didn't even want to _know_ what a "waifu" was. I looked to the admin; stern, tidy, straight-laced. Though I'd run into San a couple times around the server, Slenda felt a lot more tangible, for lack of a better word. It didn't feel as if asking her questions would end in cryptic answers or unrealistic spells of unconsciousness.

"Why in the Nether would you want to work in a place like this?" I asked, gazing out over the sea of bland cement and distant neon pink blossoms, trying to ignore the churning disgust in my stomach. Slenda looked at me, her thick eyebrows pulled together in a strained look of confusion. It seemed like she saw the excess, but wasn't put off in the same way I was, or at least wasn't on the same page, "I mean you and Roxxie are like… Normal."

Slenda tilted her head to either side, lips parting to laugh but closing as if she wasn't ready to speak, still putting the story together, grunts and sighs filling the space. I smiled at her, glad that part of this crazy world was finally starting to budge. "Well yeah the server's messy, but it's not _that_ bad, y'know? Besides, how Roxxie and I got here isn't much of a story…"

She let out a deep sigh, scratching her head. Her expressions were more and more fluid as she spoke, her exasperated smile beginning to crack, "Me and her just got tired of the way things were run in our server that we decided to try making our own, y'know? So much land is taken up by established servers, though, so we just started looking for one to join, and we found Weebtown."

"You've been in Weebtown for a while then, I take it?"

The admin dusted off a stone slab bench and sat on it, smiling incredulously at herself. "No actually, we've only been here a few months… When we arrived, the admin was already begging people to take her place. No one here wanted the responsibility so I took the position and made Roxxie my operator. It's been non-stop weaboo nonsense ever since."

I took a seat next to her, Slenda keeping a slight distance between us, "I mean, you're one of the only normal people here and you stabbed my girl—" A finger pushed up her glasses on her nose, warmth flushing into her cheeks, " _San,_ in the middle of the night."

 _To be fair, it was her fault._

At the very least, I was glad to see that I was able to find someone to talk to in the server. Another boring straight with no interest in body pillows or honor fighting. The most significant difference between us however, seemed to be in patience. Where I could never imagine running this bizarre anime death carnival, Slenda seemed to be taking it in stride, or at least doing the best she could.

"Do you ever regret it?" I asked, "Becoming the admin, that is?"

Slenda shook her head, a smile growing on her face, just barely hidden behind her stooping shoulders and curly tufts of hair.

"No… Weebtown's a mess, but that's kinda why I like it," She smiled, even warmer than before. It was the smile of a proud mother looking over her horrible weaboo child, "It's like a fixer-upper, you know? If I can improve things here, I'll actually be doing something really special."

I smiled back at her and tried to close the difference between us on the bench, scooting slightly closer. Her eyelids came halfway over her eyes and she slid farther down the bench, the storm over her eyes returned. "I just wish Roxxie felt the same…"

Slenda's voice trailed off, her eyes wandering upwards. Without a word, she left her seat on the bench, tip-toeing forward. I followed her eyes only to see a thin wisp of smoke rising over the far edge of the eastern district of high schools. Shouts could be heard as the black pillar grew, flickers of heat beginning to pour from its bottom. The admin's eyes shot open, startled with disappointed realization.

The admin darted down the path, fumbling in her pocket for something as her feet forced her way forward. I ran behind her, trying my best to keep pace by throwing myself in the vague direction she was running, though I was completely lost to the situation. As we neared the swirling smoke and the fiery chaos at its base however, I started to remember what the guardians had mentioned before– about San "trying to blow up the server every other week." I gulped.

"Crap don't tell me that's–"

 _"Oh, it'd better not be."_ Slenda growled back. She pulled a book out of her pocket, something I'd recognized as an admin's book of names, and clutched it tight as she ran. _She couldn't be…_

"THE WAIFUS ARE BURNING!" A distant voice cried, pulling my eyes forward. The area beyond the high schools was clearer now as the excessive stone structures began to part. It was a clearing of technicolor figures, much like other sprite art displays in my home server, but with one major difference. The art wasn't of innocent, normal things like flowers or mobs or tools, they were all of two-dimensional anime girls that towered over the eastern high schools. Some were blue-haired, some had dragon tails, some cat ears, but all had ridiculous outfits and horrifying cleavage. _So that's what a waifu is…_ I pondered, my face twisting as I followed behind Slenda, _Maybe we could just… Let this place burn?_

Weebs ran back and forth under the amber flames, buckets of water and blocks of dirt in their hands that they were using to snuff the flames, though the blaze seemed too much for the disheveled otakus to handle on their own. In the center of the havoc stood a cloaked figure; dark fabric swirled around their body, tossed by the wind. Their hood was pinned in the front by a skull-shaped steel pendant and chain, the little light that glinted off the face shining like a steely grin. The figure stepped forward, followed by one or two weebs, breaking off from the crowds of onlookers. Slenda moved to address the cloaked weaboo but he spoke first, cutting her off with a voice that was such a stark departure from his form it felt like it put a crack in the air. It was somewhere between the shrill cry of a cat and that of a gossiping old woman. It was the kind of voice you'd imagine an old yellowed skull to have, not a living player.

"No need to worry, administrator. We've got things under control here."

His voice may have been annoying, but looking behind him, I found that he wasn't completely wrong. Though the blaze still roared, the players had been pushing it back, or at least keeping it contained. _But, why would he hold someone back from helping, especially Slenda?_ Weebs climbed and jumped along the structures, some crowding around their feet to stare upwards in disheveled awe while others went to stand behind the cloaked man, their eyes burning a hole through us and their hands restless. Slenda took a heavy breath, pushing a loose tuft of hair back behind the side of her glasses.

"Well, I have to admit," She said, still gasping from our run up here, "I wouldn't expect the leader of a weeb gang to do such a good cleanup job, _Desu Skull_."

I shook my head. _Excuse me,_ _WHAT?_

"It's pronounced _Deathzu Skuru._ " The cloaked figure gave a fake cough, a hand on his hip, his other hand gesticulating dramatically in the air. His primadonna-of-the-undead voice seemed a perfect fit, "But that's close enough I guess.. _._ "

As I continued to survey the scene behind the sassy skull-faced weirdo, something suddenly caught my eye. There was a structure of iron beside one of the waifus, a hasty assemblage of iron bars like a makeshift cage. There was a blue and green form inside, one that instantly pulled me in. I leaned in to try and get a closer look but _"Deathzu Skuru"_ stepped in front of me, his arms outstretched. He was closer now, and I could see two white lights inside of his hood, glowing brightly, offensively. "Now now, you really don't have to be here. We've got this all handled."

Slenda strode through his hasty blockade, a look of impassioned disapproval on her face. It didn't take long for the image within the cage to become clear to us, the neon blue mass of hair flipping to the side to reveal San's dumb grin.

"Hey guys! I'm being detained!"

"YOU LET HER OUT RIGHT NOW!" Slenda barked, spinning on her heel to face the hooded head honcho. Deathuzu Skuyuru (or however you pronounce his name _)_ simply stood and laughed, his snicker growing to a high, overpowering cackle. He moved a metal-clawed hand to pull back his hood, revealing his face–or rather—a mask. He wore an iron mask in the shape of a skull without a lower jaw, the teeth extending to a cartoonish exaggerated length. A white skull was painted on the metal forehead ( _because I guess the skull-shaped mask wasn't enough)_ and in front of his eyes he wore a pair of sunglasses, each lens of which had a holographic skull sticker that shined a powerful white in sunlight. I wasn't surprised by the weeb's outfit at this point, given the other players in the server. _Just disappointed._

"IF we let out this little troublemaker, she'll just do something like this again, and again, and again! You definitely don't seem intent on doing anything about it. You just give her a slap on the wrist!"

"It isn't your decision!" Slenda snapped, pulling back out her book of usernames, "I'm the admin here and I decide how griefers here are punished. If you do anything to her, I'll ban you for PvP in a neutral area, _Death Skull!_ "

The skull-faced vigilante coughed again, " _Deathzu Skuru…_ BUT ANYWAY, you can't ban me unless I've already attacked her, and so you'll be unable to stop me with my mod—" The cloaked figure spoke laboriously, epically, reaching into his sleeve. He pulled out a sleek black weapon that fit snugly in his hand, its squared end pointed towards the sky like some ancient and powerful obelisk, _"A GUN! THAT KILLS YOU!"_

"YOU FIEND!" Slenda gasped.

 _That could literally be any weapon,_ I thought, _it's functionally the same as a bow and arrow why would you even mod that?_ I rolled my eyes, materializing one of Zolo's swords in my hands. It barely took any thought to summon my mod anymore, the last weapon I copied appearing instantly, like the press of a button. Like a reflex. "Okay, this is dumb," I interjected, "Can I just like beat him up or something?" I stepped forward and Desu Skull flailed back, yelping at the weapon in my palm, his gun waggling in every direction. "Hey! Careful with that thing, normy! That's a dangerous weapon!"

He stuck his feet firmly on the ground, his arm straightening, pointing his firearm at San's cage like an arrow. I stepped forward, twirling the sword in my hand like a bat, the steel slicing the air. It was only then that I began to think about how little training or understanding I had of swordplay, _but I hoped it would work out. These things usually… Well. Okay, maybe I did have reason to be worried._

Slenda would have to punish me somehow for fighting Desu Skull, and I'd probably end up injuring a stray weeb or two, but I figured it was worth it. Maybe it was a weakness of mine, but I couldn't stand jerks like him bullying other players just to make a point. If I couldn't kill him, I was hoping at the very least I could give get him away from San, get her to safety, even if it meant getting myself in trouble.

Slenda grabbed the back of my collar, yanking me back and growling at me through gritted teeth, _"I know you like stabbing my players, but this situation is a bit more complicated than that, " **Cyrustheslayer**."' _I could swear I saw the weeb's skull mask smirk at us. I scowled at him. This situation felt too familiar to me. Standing across from a twisted modder with a metal mask and a bizarre sense of justice, "We can't let him kill San. There has to be another way to handle this."

I pulled my sword to my side, but didn't despawn it. It still didn't make sense to me why Slenda was so protective of San; threatening to ban players who hadn't done anything to her, scolding those who put her in even mild danger, even though she could respawn. I'd heard of players before who couldn't respawn, whose deaths were permanent, but they all lived in special servers, "hardcore" servers. Was San a hardcore player too? I clenched my sword, ready to take Desu Skull down. Just in case.

Desu Skull cocked his head and chuckled, observing Slenda's leash-like hold on me. "Oh! Well. I wasn't expecting you to just _let_ me exact vigilante justice, but I guess it do be like that sometimes!" The modder waved his gun around joyously, nearly dropping it.

"That's not what I meant!" Slenda cried back.

"NOW WATCH, ADMIN! AS I MAKE YOUR HORRIBLE WAIFU DISAPPEA–"

Desu Skull looked dramatically towards San's cage, his shades narrowed down the sights of his modded firearm, only to see empty space. A cage with no captive, a hole carved in the bars. "Wh- Wha–" His gun shook in his hand, first with confusion, then with frustration, then with anger. The weeb stomped his foot, pointing at members of his gang who stood in the crowd, crying out and demanding an answer to where she was, , "CAN'T I TRUST MY GOONS TO PERFORM ONE SIMPLE TASK?! WHICH ONE OF YOU LET HER OUT, HUH? STEP FORWARD!"

As Desu Skull spoke the air began to swirl, the air hot, dry, and unnatural. It was as if the air around us was angry. Just as Desu Gun moved to point his gun towards us, to threaten us for an answer, a searing gust burst through the air between our two groups, sending bodies flying in every direction. Burning air whipped around us as if we'd been caught in a tornado, throwing us against nearby walls and dispersing the crowd of weebs like a sand castle kicked by a beach bully. The only thing left standing was Desu Skull, his steel-armored body resolute against the supernatural winds. A figure appeared in the hot, swirling cloud behind him, eyes glowing with yellow fire. The figure's hand reached out, taking the gun in her iron grip.

Roxxie crushed the gun in her hand, the firearm bubbling out from its corners like hot wax. Death Skull tried to break away but Roxxie pulled him close, her flaming claws moving forward against his verbal protests. Trails of broken flame came up from her eyes, her ponytail bursting into a flaming halo. "N- Now now, no need to be a tsundere..!" He gasped, trying and failing to wrench his hand away from her grip. Though Slenda and I were both pushed against the cement of a high school's outer wall, Slenda pulled herself to her feet, pushing off and trudging through the harsh wind.

"Lucky for you guys, I just happened to be in the area." Roxxie grinned, holding her prize high like a hunter. San stepped out from behind her, waving at Slenda. Desu Skull managed to writhe out of Roxxie's grip only to end up in the dirt where Roxxie pinned him under her boot. The operator smirked down at him, then looked up to give a beaming smile to Slenda.

"Roxxie, let him go!" Slenda cried.

"What, are you're saying we should just let him off?" She questioned, her tone stirred with a genuine confusion. The operator grimaced, pushing Desu Skull's steely mask farther into the dirt, "He just tried to execute San for a crime she didn't even commit! We're supposed to just let crap like that fly?"

I hoisted myself up, summoning a sword to anchor myself in the dirt, and another to pull myself forward, bringing myself closer to the pillar of flame. _One overpowered jerk down and one to go, I guess._ I grunted against the whipping gusts. Streaks of flame were beginning to form as well, falling from her body like streamers and spinning in the air around the scene like the beginning of a fiery hurricane.

"Just let him go!" I yelled, Roxxie's eyes snapping to me in condescending surprise. Slenda stared at me, her half-lidded eyes as unamused as Roxxie's, as if this was their private squabble. I wondered how many times they'd done this, "I don't like this guy either but it's not like being a dick isn't going to make the players like you any better!"

The operator growled, turning to Slenda. The fires were beginning to die around her as her expression became more weary, "Slenda, you know if we keep letting them do more and more of this, the server's just going to fall apart!"

"I don't care!" Slenda cried back, clutching her book of names tightly in her hand, "We can't do stuff like this! We are not like this!" Roxxie squinted at her, the fire in her eyes burning brightly, flickers of the flame flying back from her face in streams. Though I felt less than intimidating being that I was pitted against this experienced mod user, I pointed a sword in her direction, holding firmly onto the one I had planted in the ground. Together, me and Slenda stared her down until she reluctantly released the weeb from under her, stuffing her hands in her pockets. She plunged them deep, as if resisting the urge to hurl a fireball at the rebellious weaboo as he rose to his feet, dusting off his cloak. "The admin's right, Roxxie, that was rather _rude_ of you." The skeletal loser sneered, tossing the melted remains of his weapon into the dirt. I felt a blood vessel pulse with opposition from deep within my brain.

"However," The skull-faced gangster interjected, reaching for a black shape that materialized within his cloak, "It is going to take hundreds of man hours to restore the damage done to these precious murals, so I'm afraid as an honorable weeb my hands are still tied–!"

Before any of us could react, a shot rang out, Slenda shrieking as the bullet grazed the top of Roxxie's forehead, sending her flying back, the fire in her eyes bursting. Desu Skull then turned to us, his gun pointed right between right between my eyes.

"BAN **GUNGALEFREAK10**. PvP in a neutral zone."

Slenda clapped her book of usernames shut and after a second's pause, Desu Skull became a blur of grey, his body launched at an incomprehensible speed towards the server boundaries. Roxxie laughed, smiling coldly as she brought her eyes level with ours, blood trickling down her forehead. San soon came down a path to the side, seemingly gleefully unaware of just how much trouble she'd caused, her eyes beaming as she caught Slenda.

As she passed by Roxxie however, the operator caught her shoulder, laughing as she spoke to her, "Sorry for all of this by the way, didn't mean for you to get in so much danger."

San smiled and folded her arms behind her head, seemingly content just to be caught up in all the drama. I turned to Slenda, only to see her eyes brimming with purple fire, her knuckles white on the book she clasped in her hand. She stomped towards her administrator, ignoring San, her body moving like a loosed arrow towards her target.

 _"Excuse me Roxxie, what in the Nether did you just say?"_ Slenda questioned through gritted teeth to a smiling operator.

"I set the fires," Roxxie said with a shrug, as if it shouldn't have been a surprise. Slenda looked like she was going to erupt, "I got tired of looking at all of those waifus and figured I could just get rid of them. If any of the high schools caught fire I'd consider it an added bonus."

Slenda grabbed her by the collar, pulling her close enough for the blood from Roxxie's forehead to drip onto the round lenses of her glasses. I tried getting closer, but I realized there was nothing I could do. This wasn't an isolated event, but the last straw of a fight they'd been having for months. "YOU CAN'T JUST _DO_ THAT!" Slenda screamed into Roxxie's face, her arms shaking.

"And why not?" Roxxie chimed back, squinting at the admin, "I'm the second most powerful person in this server since I'm your only operator. I should be able to start controlled burns like this! It's cleaning up land that _we_ run!"

Roxxie shook Slenda from her collar, staring daggers for a few seconds before finally stomping off. She launched into the air with a burst of flame, flying to some unseen corner of the server like a loosed arrow. Her eyes wet with anger and exhaustion, Slenda collapsed to her knees, San running to her side.

"You okay Slenda?" Asked San, her hand moving instinctively to pet Slenda's mounds of curly dark brown hair.

The admin smiled at her, wrapping her arms around the creeper girl. "I should be asking _you_ that, you doofus. You almost got shot!"

"I probably woulda been fine," she smirked back, burrowing her forehead into the admin's like an overly blunt eskimo kiss. The two smiled, giggling at each other for a few seconds, but Slenda seemed to be holding onto something. Her face never seemed to pull into a full smile, her eyes always a little strained, pointed just over San's shoulder.

She was worried about the operator, or more accurately, what she was going to do. And so was I. Shivering, I looked to the stream of smoke that followed Roxxie, my stomach churning. Weebtown was just like home to me now… The only problem was, it was just like home.


	4. Chapter 4: Kill it with Fire

"I think that's everything…" I sighed, looking at the pair of empty chests and bare floor.

The Desu Skull incident was only the other day, but it was more than enough to convince me to leave. This place was turning out just like Vanillakings. And I knew I'd had to leave here too. _Why wait to screw up or get burned alive when I get get a head start, y'know?_

I'd decorated the small room with nick-nacks, all of which had made their way into my pockets. Patches of carpet I could buy around town with the little bartering items I had. A dead tree from the desert just outside the server's northwest wall. A record player with no records. I smiled, looking around at my mess. I would say that it was a partially intentional, an "organized" mess, but that almost made it worse. Occasionally as I packed, San's smile tried to push its way into my mind and Slenda's patient gaze alongside it, calming me. But behind their soft gazes were the cold stare of a swordswoman, the crazed eyes of a weaboo boxer, a pair of glittering skull stickers, and a pair of flaming orbs, all baring down on me. Shaking my head, I punched the button next to the door. The iron swung automatically in front of me and I strode forward, nearly crashing into the figure lingering in the doorway.

"Hello Cyrus." Teeth glinted from the figure. The lights in the hallway were dark, like the power had gone out, but I failed to notice at that moment. The figure stepped closer. I stumbled back, bumping into the foot of my bed. "H- Hi Roxxie," I stammered, placing a hand on the end the bed to look natural—my hand slipping–"What's up?"

Her eyes traced the room, taking note of the empty chest by my bed and the expression on my face. It felt like being caught in the eyes of a jungle cat, her claws digging into the ground, teeth bared. Ready to pounce. I started sweating.

"I'm going to cut to the chase, since it looks like you're heading somewhere," Roxxie sighed, leaning against the doorway. Her eyes were cold like ash, her voice heavy. She offered me her hand, which I couldn't help but stare at. "This server is a mess. Always has been, there's no point in denying that. But I was thinking that we could potentially start it over. Hit the reset button, y'know?"

The tips of the hair on Roxxie's ponytail burned like the ends of cigarettes, ashes gently falling from the tips of the charred lengths. It burned like that when she was thinking deeply sometimes, or when she was irritated. Sometimes I thought it was a side-effect of her powers, but now I couldn't help but think she was using it to intimidate me. The conversation she was making now felt like an echo of the past few days. Whether I ran into the others or not, I could always count on Roxxie tracking me down, asking me how I felt. What I'd do to change Weebtown. It was strange before, but never this eerie. Whatever she was planning on doing, it was close. _Why can't I ever meet anyone normal,_ I thought, _With a normal agenda, like killing mobs or finding treasure? Why deranged griefers obsessed with pranks and corrupted officials with ambiguous "big plans?"_

"So," She smiled at me, perching a hand on her hip, "What d'ya say? I mean, you must be getting pretty tired of all the weeb jokes at this point, right? _"_

As much as I wanted to go with her, I felt like it wasn't my decision to make. The weebs here were a little wild, sure. I thought a lot of them were nuts, but then again, I didn't feel like it was my place to decide whether that should change. If being nuts works for them, it works. I could barely make my mind up for myself half the time and I wasn't about to start making decisions like this for others.

"Nah." I breathed, my teeth clenched as I spoke, "I just don't think I'm your guy."

The operator tried to force a smile as she pushed up away from the wall, the fire in her eyes sparkling. "That's fine, no worries." She moved her foot away from the iron door she'd been propping open, the heavy steel swiveling closed behind her. I shot her a concerned look, wondering if she was really just leaving, but she just popped off a pair finger guns, her fingertips smoking, "Take care of yourself alright, streets are dangerous."

Her face disappeared behind the pane of iron, the small rectangle of light closing, an anxious smile left smeared on my face. For a second I forgot what I was doing, that I intended on being gone by now. I figured it would be fine though. Roxxie was certainly up to something, but it was probably fine right? I'd leave the spawn town, descend the long stairs to the ring of high schools and be long bone before she does anything. A tremendous crashing sound shook the air around me, and the building. Roxxie was angery, and it was my time to leave. With shaking legs, I hit the button next to the door and took a long step forward, my arms swinging… Only to meet a street filled with flames.

The hallway of the building was gone, the open street and the sides of neighboring buildings filling my vision. Fire lapped against and spilt from the insides of a giant wool creeper in the center of town, spreading across the wires and paper lanterns that intersected the spawn town's buildings and leaping to the other buildings in the square. Homes, shops, benches, and even some of the _weebs_ were ablaze as the world spun in a wild, hot panic. The sides of the opening were molten, still burning wildly as if a burning drill had just bore through the wall. Large masses of magma thrashed through the streets, like the claws of some flaming beast, the streams of molten rock smashing the foundations of buildings like they were blocks of sand. It was like a demon tearing through the server; its cry was the roar of the fire and the screams of weaboos and its claws the streams of molten amber that tore through everything in sight. My body shook, my head a mess of fear, frustration, and heat.

The gatekeeper Zolo burst through the side of a nearby building, bricks blown in every direction as she flew through the air, smoke trailing behind her. Before I could question it, I saw the belt-covered gatekeeper Jortaro step out from the crater left in the building, his boxing glove smoking. He looked forward with a hungry grin, launching from the ruins of the structure less like a human and more like a rocket, flying towards the battered swordsman. I fell back into the door to my home, head banging against the warm steel. _"What.. In the Nether–!"_

"You think you're better than me?!" Roxxie shouted from the rooftops above. I looked up to see her standing on top of the creeper statue in the middle of town, the blaze surrounding her like a burning frame. She brought a hand up, nearly white from heat, and pointed her palm in my direction. The beast reared its head; the flames tugged by her every movement like they were tied to her fingers with invisible strings. A bile of magma spilt forth from behind a nearby building, like a beast's maw open and screaming with the roar of the fire, filling my vision as it barreled towards me towards me.

I leapt back onto a nightstand as the magma poured through the street and consumed the entryway to my room, forcing its way in. I scampered back on a pile of books, my back slamming against the back wall. Before I knew it, I was watching my bed sink inot an amber sea. I took time from my escape to stare disapprovingly at the smoking mass where the bed used to be. _Back to my old server if I die here,_ I thought, _This day just gets better and better._ Though at that point, going back to the old server almost seemed better. If only for a moment. The ground began to rumble and I instinctively dove for the window, smashing it just as the room behind me was ripped in two, the magma like a blade erupting from the ground. I rolled into the alley outside the window, hoping that the side of the building or the building's shadow between would keep me out of her sight. All I had to do now was find a way out of the alleyway and to the stairs that would take me down from the spawn town. I'd probably get a little lost in the high schools, but at least it was better than burning to death.

As I took my first steps towards the alley's entrance, I heard Roxxie's laugh echo through the air like a clap of thunder, magma quickly spilling into the alleyway. _Of course! I couldn't just get away safely. That would be LAME._ I swung in the opposite direction of the fiery flood, running towards what I quickly realized was a dead end—the end of the plateau. The middle of the server was like thick raised cylinder, the only way down being the long staircases that connected the spawn town to the ground. Well, the only way without taking fall damage that is. Before me was a wide blackened sky with cherry blossoms at its feet, a drop of hundreds of blocks below, behind me a wall of lava, roaring at my back. I felt the flames licking at my heels and inched forward, mentally preparing myself for the drop below. Was I willing to risk the pain from fall damage to escape the fire? Maybe once I reached ground level, if my legs weren't too broken, I could run away. I could drill my way through the outside walls and get away from here. Away from all of this. I took a deep breath, the magma ready to make the decision for me.

A sound cut through the air as the building across the alley from mine burst open, the wall blown open by a glowing steel blade. The green-haired swordswoman appeared from the dispersing smoke, offering me her hand and literally pulling me from the fire. More lava began to pour into the alleyway as Zolo pulled me up the stairs of the structure, the fiery mass beginning to chase us.

 _"Nanishiterunda, baka?!"_ She cried in her weeb language.

A warm grin filled the space between my cheeks. _"Trying my best!"_ I answered, figuring she was asking how I was. She flashed a weary smile and grabbed my arm, pulling me forward once more. Her face was so much brighter when she looked at me, but still flashed back to her dark, dutiful stare when she ran forward. I could just barely see her eyes behind her long bangs, but I could see the determination in them. The anger. Her dark anger was no longer directed at me, but at the real danger to the server. At the fire, and at the server's operator. Magma rushed up the staircase below us like water filling a well, my pace quickening to match Zolo's. We could hear parts of the building crumble beneath as Roxxie's burning hands swiped through its foundation, our footing uneven and rushed as we reached the top.

The rooftops above the blaze were cracked, smoke pouring up through them and fire clawing at their insides, desperate to reach the surface. Flame clamored around the building below us, stray embers stinging my skin and licks of flame biting my legs. It was like standing on a tree trunk as it burnt below you, except I was looking across an entire forest. In the center of the square, atop the head of the building-sized creeper effigy, the only human shape stood surrounded by pillars of smoke and amber waves. Her silhouette was hazy, the black fading into the rage that surrounded us. I swallowed hard. Her back was to us, but I wasn't sure how long that would last. Beyond the square, I could see the high schools surrounding us in a grand circle, all ablaze. Explosions burst through the burning alleys, the screams of the inhabitants scarcely rising above the roar of the fire. Some screamed in weebish tongues and others in english, all scattered and frantic, all trailing into the smoke-filled air. As I tried to get steady, explosions rocked the ground. Sudden bursts of smoke came from adjacent streets and the mass of high schools that encircled the server. I wondered for a moment if San was the source; if everyone but Zolo, Slenda and I were working to destroy this server. I thought of Zolo earlier and how she was fighting against the other guardian, the belted weirdo. _Was he on Roxxie's side? Just how many were working with her?_ I looked at the swordswoman standing beside me. _And just how many has she taken down?_

Zolo glared at the dim silhouette in front of us, her eyes burning furious and green. A flourish of yellow flame leapt from Roxxie's ponytail, her hands clapping gleefully as she spoke to herself, "We're finally going to see Weebtown at its full potential. Rebuilding without all its unnecessary infighting and underage idol worship," She placed a cobblestone slab on the charred surface of the effigy below her, plopping down onto it like one would a park bench. She let out a long sigh, looking out over the destruction, "…I hope."

The swordswoman growled under her breath, words crunched between grinding teeth. A click resounded through the air as she unsheathed a sword, then a second click as she pulled another, one after the other until she had at least four, no, five, no—ten swords pointed towards the operator. She had them clenched in the bridges of her fingers, squeezed in the joints of her elbows and knees, and she had at least two held in her teeth. The yellow trails from the operator's ponytail turned from yellow to a cold blue, her body pivoting on the slab. Her expression was obscured behind the flame, the cerulean streams pouring around her face, only the pure white-hot pupils inside of them visible. She stood up, and I could swear the fires in the streets below rose with her, their roars now deafening. The green-haired weaboo ran towards the operator, bouncing off of each rooftop in the square, bouncing across every concentric ring undaunted as she flipped and spun through the air, her body like a ball of angry shrapnel.

Just as Zolo neared the operator, an explosion shook a building behind Roxxie, a bulky form emerging from the smoke, climbing from the hole in the building with a grunt. It was San, her turquoise blue hair glowing as smoke pulled away from her form. Roxxie turned towards them, away from the approaching Zolo and away from me, the color of her fire changing again to bright auburn. As she ascended, another figure came with her, San's free arm pulling her up through the crack in the structure. The second figure slammed a book onto the rooftop as they clambered up, their glasses crooked on their face and sweat streaming down around their furious violet eyes. "So glad you could join me." Roxxie giggled, rising to her feet. Slenda glared at her. The operator stuck out her right arm, pointing backwards towards the nearing Zolo. Before any of us could react, a pillar of fire erupted from Roxxie's palm, scorching the front of Zolo's body, then enveloping it, the swordswoman disappearing in the sudden river of fire. Unable to stand, I fell backward on my hands, horrified. _I was right,_ my mind screamed, _I'm not ready to do this. She isn't just some bully like from my old server. She's a monster._

"Now, I know what you may be thinking, Slenda…" Roxxie laughed, hand on her hip, speaking to the admin. I felt the fire below us grow cooler, the fire on her head changing again to sunlight yellow. Her face had turned away from me, but I could tell by her voice that she was wearing that same smile she always wore. The smile of a predator, "But This is what I've been talking about. It's just like what we did at Goldenworks, we destroy everything and start over. But we don't have to run away from it–"

"THAT'S NOT THE POINT!" Slenda cried back, tears in her eyes. Roxxie recoiled slightly, "The server deserves so much more than this! We can't just throw away everything they've worked for and built here if we don't know how to rebuild it ourselves. Stooping to griefing doesn't make us revolutionaries, Roxxie, it just makes us jerks!"

Roxxie's white hot grimmace creased burned against the blackened sky, the curls of her flaming maw arcing up around her face, the fire around her arms stirring and growing. Even from behind her I could feel her white hot malice burning towards San and Slenda as if they'd fed a thousand trees into her fire. "I guess I'm just a troublemaker then…" Roxxie breathed, her sigh broken by creeping laughter. Her flames began to change once more, passing the soft yellow of a campfire and passing the amber of a house fire, passing even the searing blue of her rage, her flames now pure white, "After everything I've done, everything I've set up, everything I've been planning to fix this server, that'S ALL I AM!"

Slenda's eyes snapped downwards to her book of usernames, clutching San tightly, _"BAN **XxFieryQueenRoxx–** "_

Roxxie spun atop the creeper head, a wave of magma following her arm, buildings smashing in a row as the claws of her invisible beast tore through them, shattering the ground beneath San and Slenda. San managed to grab onto a nearby windowsill, clinging for dear life as burning bricks and stone ricocheted off the building around her. She turned to see Slenda, engulfed in flame, collide with the building next to her, tumbling into the abyss below with the admin's tome. San reached a hand out, cursing as she grasped at the air, her eyes desperate.

"Just let her fall…" Roxxie smirked, her voice a cold growl as Slenda disappeared in the fire, "Our deaths don't matter anyway! do they? We all respawn. She'll just waking back up in her bed soon. And if it burned, she'll go back to Goldenworks where everything's normal and terrible. Just how she likes it."

I felt something stirring in my gut, white electricity surging through me, straightening out my shaking limbs. Smoke was filling my lungs, scraping my throat, but I still yelled as loud as I could, _"MAYBE SHE WOULDN'T TRY TO STOP YOU IF YOU WEREN'T BEING SUCH A DICK!"_

Roxxie turned to me, her eyes white hot, edges tipped with blue fire, as if an entire forest had been fed to the fire inside her. I didn't realize at first that I'd even spoken. That I'd snapped at a blaze in human form. I really _didn't_ bring my survival instinct on this journey. Molten masses broke through the rooftops around us, spiraling into the air. The crests of their flames were like spines, their serpentine bodies dripping magma that seared the buildings below. My foothold shook as more molten forms broke through the buildings next to me, closing in too quickly. Roxxie continued to laugh, "Go home, Cyrus."

My eyes creased, and I saw Bernadette. I saw the others from my home. And I was angry. As she began to shift her weight and the burning maws sped through the air, an explosion shattered the atmosphere, causing her beasts to destabilize. An explosion that struck Roxxie in the back. Roxxie and I turned to see San on the rooftop nearby, blocks of TNT in each of her hands. She lobbed another block of TNT at Roxxie, then another, then another, the creeper girl sending a volley of explosions at the flaming operator. Roxxie quickly whipped magma streams of magma around her, the streams creating a half-cage of flame that blocked any blocks heading her way. She seemed impenetrable. Invincible. But I saw an opportunity. She was completely focused on blocking San's volleys, and her back was turned to me.

The events that had led up to this moment began to replay in my mind, from being kicked out, to finding San in the forest, to talking with Slenda, to the fire– everything seemed to be pointing me towards this moment, towards this fight. Spawning Zolo's swords in my hands, I felt for one strange moment that everything had been planned, that my foolish desire to fight against people like Roxxie would actually be paid off, that I would actually be able to help a server, rather than just being some stray element of it. That I would have somewhere I truly belonged. I finally had a chance to protect an entire server from a bully and do it _right._ And I wasn't going to run now. I _couldn't_ run now. No disappointing Bernadette. No killing some innocent idiots. Cyrus would be the hero today, and I needed to do was stab her in the back.

My feet stomped across the rooftop, the shaking in my legs beginning to disappear as blood properly rushed to them, my body feeling hot somehow, even when I was surrounded by fire. I pushed off the end of the roof, the building crumbling as my body left it, the next building in my path coming up under my feet as if it was flying up to catch me. Searing air pushed against my body but I pushed forward, my body moving naturally, automatically, running and kicking off of another rooftop, clearing another ring of buildings as I approached the center and approached Roxxie. I saw Zolo in my mind, leaping towards the burning figure, struck down without a second thought.

I started screaming as I ran across the last building. It was just as stupid as it was vital, the intensity of the moment and the intensity of the fire spiraling around and within me as the operator's white flames filled my vision, her cries reverberating in my mind as the world around us grew silent. The fire on her body died as I burst into her, the world fading from white back into the charred cityscape of crumbling stone. The towers of magma began to topple around us as I and the operator lay in a heap on the creeper's head. Little was left but its brutal steel frame and every part of me slammed into it at once. Pain throbbed in my limbs and my chest was heavy, my mind fading in and out with my breaths. The oxygen in my lungs felt completely depleted. _Maybe I shouldn't have done so much screaming…_ I thought for a moment, joking on my breath, incredulous.

Roxxie began to rise however, a sword still jammed in her back. She spat out some blood onto the rooftop, grunting with a visceral frustration. The hairs on the ends of her ponytail burned like cigarettes, the fire creeping up them, quickening, crawling closer to her head. The fire in her eyes spraying out from the sides of her face like geysers, her head lighting up completely in a mane of pure, unadulterated, blazing rage. A scorching eye locked onto me, sword still lodged in her crooked abdomen.

"You… You too?"

As she raised a hand already covered in a mane of fire, the embers of the air swirling and collecting around it, adding to its fire, we both heard a voice from somewhere. A voice as stoic as it was livid, the growling of a mother bear.

 _"BAN…"_ The voice began, the fire on Roxxie's body growing weak and cold. She spun to see Slenda, covered in ash, a book in her hand.

"Slenda!" San called out, beaming. There were tears in her eyes. Slenda's admin command continued, her eyes trained on Roxxie, the flames glowing in transparent images on her lenses, " ** _XxFieryQueen–_** "

" _NO!"_ Roxxie ran for the edge of the rooftop, the flames on her body going out, her voice frailer than before. The monster in her gone as she was chased into a corner. As she was trying to jumped from the top of the creeper's charred skeleton, a figure leapt up from below, shooting from the charred streets below like a sniper's shot.

 _"Omae wa.. Mou shindeiru."_ Zolo murmured, her eyes burning with anger, her tunic spattered with blood. She drove three more swords through Roxxie, pinning her in place. Roxxie cried out, broken. Nailed to the rooftop. Realizing all too late that she was trapped, fire sparked on her arms in a futile effort to escape. Slenda pushed her sleeve up against her eyes, failing to dry them, finishing her command, " ** _RoxxiexX–!_** "

Roxxie was ripped from the air between Zolo's two swords, her blades and mine tossed as the air burst around us, like we were being sideswiped by a jet, her screams echoing through the air. I coughed on the smoke as it filled my lungs and choked the corners of my vision. _The swords… Did they kill her, too?_ I raised an arm weakly into the air, my sight blurring, dimming as my heartbeat slowed to a crawl. Roxxie had been sent farther than the edge of the server, she'd been sent back to her spawn, back to whatever distant server the admin and operator had come from. I barely managed to let out a weak, "Wooooo!" my voice cracking as my head fell, my lungs closed and my consciousness gone as I made contact with the cold, charred steel.

Time stirred as light flashed in front of my eyes, the world flickering back to me. There was a mass of blue and green moving in front of my eyes between front of the sun's light. Sounds from around me began to come into focus, San's concerned voice echoing in my ears. As my vision cleared, I began to recognize her features and her smile. I felt her pull me close to her chest. My mind was racing, filled with sentences, questions, images. I remembered San fighting on the rooftop. And I remembered fighting with her. Fighting with Slenda.

My words came out slowly, my body still waking up, "The admin… Is she okay?"

"I'm here…" Slenda grunted, her form pushing out from behind San, her shadow towering above us. She looked around us, body pivoting as her shoulders fell, "I'm here."

My eyes rummaged the smoking ruins around us, my heart sinking with the admin's. Only the frames of some buildings were left, but that couldn't be said for all of them. Slenda glared with hollow eyes, both irritated and broken, looking as if she was searching for something. Her body slumped, leaning into San. So much had been happening, it was hard to keep my head straight. But now that I knew we'd taken down the ringleader, there was a strange twinge of pride in me. And I didn't even get kicked out of a server for it.

 **"HEY YOU!"**

A voice broke from the ashy cloud that seemed to spread from every block of charred ground around us, a weeb striding out. He was barking accusations at San, Slenda and I, and was followed by others. _Right on cue…_

"Are you gonna do anything about this?!" A weeb screamed, pointing at Slenda. She shrunk behind San, "Your operator caused this, didn't she?!"

Another shook his fist from the back of the mob. "We'll have to rebuild almost two-hundred high schools, two-HUNDRED!"

"I bet you don't even like anime!" One barked, stomping towards us.

"And what if I don't?!" Slenda shouted back, a fist immediately meeting with her face, breaking her glasses and sending her falling into San's arms. The creeper girl's eyes surged with bright blue lightning.

San pulled a sword as Slenda reached for the book in her back pocket, but the two of them cringed with pain, both unsteady. The fires of the town had not gone out, but rather moved into the eyes of the weebs as they encircled us. Fires that wouldn't go out until we were killed. And killed again. And again. But yells began to split the crowd, and soon we saw heads further away from us duck under the wall of bodies. Weebs yelped as they were thrown to the side, blood spilling upwards as players were forced aside. A head of green hair in a messy ponytail pushed out from the wall of bodies, her swords and eyes shining. Zolo put herself between us and the other weebs. She started screaming at the crowd, her voice pleading, foreign words spilling from her mouth like a river, tears pricking her eyes.

Slenda rose to her feet, taking San by the arm. She looked at the both of us with concern in her eyes, "Zolo's trying her best to defend us, but it's only gonna buy us time." Zolo looked back over her shoulder, the burning eyes of the mob digging into her, and into us. Slenda gave an exasperated sigh, clutching her admin book tightly in her hand. "Most weebs only pretend to know Japanese… There are only about 3 people in this mob who know what she's saying."

Slenda leaned towards Zolo, placing a hand on her shoulder and whispering into her ear. The weeb turned to us, face strained in confusion, but Slenda slipped away before she could respond, leaving the book of usernames at her feet. Slenda quickly broke into a sprint, yelling for us to follow her as the mob picked up speed. The three of us ran towards the edge of the server, escaping through a hole in the outer wall left by the griefers' assaults. The mob screaming behind us split around Zolo like a river parting around a stone, the swordswoman struggling to hold them back, even with her sword.

We soon cleared the forest, but kept running, running onwards until we ended up into a jungle, then crossed over into the sandy shores of a desert. We kept running until the shouting of the crowd faded into the trees behind us and we were almost sure we'd lost them. My body had already been on the verge of exhaustion when we left, so at the first sign of relief, my legs crumpled, my body splashing in the sand.

"So what," I gasped, "Are we supposed to do now?"

Slenda fell to her knees in the dirt beside me, her hands sliding down her head and pulling on her face. San rested a hand on her shoulder, a worried look in her eyes. She didn't seem nearly as crushed by what had happened, her legs straight and her arm moving softly, caressing the admin. But her face still twinged with a certain sadness and her eyes were moist. It wasn't the world crashing down around her, but the loss Slenda had gone through, the broken expression on her face, that's what was getting to her.

"You can do whatever you want… Roxxie's a jerk, and you've seen the damage you can do. I need to… I don't even know, I need to find her. I need to talk to her. Something."

San blinked, looking as if she was trying to search for something to say, but couldn't. She didn't seem to know Roxxie as well as Slenda did. Pain throbbed in my sides, but I pushed myself from the sand, offering Slenda my hand.

"Well, whatever it is you're end up doing…I'll go with you."


	5. Chapter 5: Desert of Dangerous Dinguses

I thought I'd be used to single player by now, but loooking back at the pillar of smoke rising from the cherry blossoms of the forest, my heart still stung.

Sand whispered under our feet as we paced across the arid expanse, clouds of sand sliding across the ground like a thick fog, our only companions the occasional cactus or dying piece of brush. We'd started walking to get away from the forest, the sounds of the woods feeding our paranoia—any crunching leaf becoming the snap of a bowstring, any rustling grass becoming a wandering member of a mob, ready to signal the others—but before long, we were walking in the middle of a sandy void with the forest only a short green line on the horizon. Though I guess with San and Slenda's home burned to the ground and the three of us chased out of the server's walls, we didn't have anything left to do but wander. But I suppose wandering's what the three of us were good at.

I looked ahead to San, marching forward through the dunes, hoodie tied around her waist, a penumbra of sweat forming just below her neckline. She'd shout something encouraging to the two of us every so often during her marches, her eyes trained on Slenda's expression. Occasionally the creeper girl would flash a weary smile, and Slenda would give her back a thumbs-up. A silent conversation that I understood, but never really joined.

The former admin was silent as we walked, the only sound from her being the sand sifting under her feet. Her eyes were fragile behind her broken glasses and sweat trickled in streams around her face, fogging the cracked lenses. I tied my jacket around my waist, imitating San, and put my scarf into my pocket, stashing it away in my inventory. I wondered why Slenda hadn't done the same, still wearing the baggy sweater from Weebtown. "Hey… Isn't that hot?" I asked, breaking the short silence between San's outbursts.

Slenda flashed a pair of frightened eyes towards me, the rhythm of her steps shaken for a few moments before proceeding. "Oh, I um…" She seemed lost in thought, and less than willing to strike up a conversation, mumbling something under her breath that I couldn't quite make out. I decided to persist.

"Huh?" I asked.

"I said I'm…" It was subtle, but I could see Slenda blush behind the twisted line of her spectacles, "I'm not wearing anything under this sweater…"

I heard San stumble ahead of us in the sand, giggling. Shoving my hands into my pockets, I went back to looking ahead, hoping to not add a death of embarrassment on top of Slenda's already long list of problems. "I'm sorry, n- never mind, that really sucks.

Slenda's footsteps quickened, an irritated snort leaving her lips as she shook her head, coming to meet my pace. "Yeah, and you wanna know what _else_ sucks, Cyrus? Everything. Literally EVERYTHING that's happened to me these past few days."

I pulled into myself, my mouth pursed in a stunned silence. San turned back towards us, an arm lifted slightly towards her friend, her fingers curling. It felt like she was waiting for the tension to leave, for an easy moment to jump in and spread her quirky positivity, but it didn't feel like it was coming. I could feel Slenda's eyes digging into me, each like a purple blade, "My closest friend—someone I've known since I spawned—betrayed me, I lost the trust of hundreds of players at once that I've been working to gain tirelessly for months, my spawn's been destroyed and I've been chased out of the closest place to home I've ever had, and in top of that; on top of EVERYTHING that's happened, we're walking straight into the Thieves' Desert RP server! Before you know it, we'll be surrounded by traps and vagabonds itching to jump us and steal everything we have while they leave us to die in the desert. AND ON TOP OF THAT, I die, it means I have to back to Goldenworks, a where I, I–!"

Heavy, round droplets began to fall from Slenda's eyes, darkening where they fell in the sand below. San dashed over to wrap the former admin in a close embrace, Slenda squeezing her back just as tightly, if not more. Slenda took off her broken glasses and pushed an arm between her and San to wipe her eyes.

"I'm just… So tired…" She sighed. Looking at her made my heart ache, but I couldn't help but find a strange comfort in her fear, in her distress. Maybe because it felt like a mirror.

"There must be some place we can rest here." I said, hoping to peel away some of the melancholy that had fallen over us, or at the very least give us some direction, Slenda glaring at me through her broken glasses. I'd heard of this desert and the server that occupied most of its land. It was a roleplay, or "RP" server, meaning it was full of people in roles and costumes, taking on fantasies through mask and cape. However, while some enjoyed purely skipping around the desert, delivering quirky lines and experiences to travelers, others reveled in the socially-acceptable chance to become a thief or a marauder, and being able to slip out of the persona at the end of the day without consequence. A game played with life and death. It was a fine place to be for an RPer, someone who was consenting to this whole bizarre system, but to us, it was a death trap.

"It's a server full of crazy RPers, yeah, but they're all players, right? They get tired. There's got to be a rest stop or a neutral zone somewhere…"

San turned to us, arm shooting into the air, waving like an eager student. I stared, baffled for a moment, before pointing to her, her face lighting up. The creeper girl put her extended arm back around Slenda, smiling brightly through the tension that still gripped Slenda and I. I wish I could know how she did it.

"There's the Sandy Speakeasy!" She grinned, her feat stomping excitedly in the sand, "It's one of those neutral whatevers and I haven't been there in ages! It'd be perfect!"

Slenda couldn't help but look at San with cloudy doubt, her brows pulled together. I had no idea that San had lived here at one point, but did Slenda not know either? The former admin tried to erase the expression, looking towards the sun. I followed her eyes. The bright square was beginning to fall below the line of the horizon, nightfall more than imminent. We watched with a creeping dread as more and more of its light began to retract, the shadows of the cacti and dunes around us growing long like the night's hungry claws.

Rolling my shoulders, I tried to straighten my back, standing strong against the dimly lit sand that surrounded us, trying to stay brave or at least put up my best act. I hated seeing people scared, whether they were being threatened by a power-hungry modder or just terrified of the world around them, and I felt it was my job to restore their confidence. With a flick of my wrist and a twist of my fingers, I activated my mod, calling out the last weapon I copied back in Weebtown. "I'm sure we can make it," I smirked, feeling my power surge into both hands. It felt stranger than the other times. Before I felt a chill, like steel, but my hands felt strangely warm, like my hands were hovering over a fireplace, "After all, we've got these, don't we?"

San and Slenda looked at me wide-eyed, Slenda's mouth pulling to the side, crooked, San's grin extending ear to ear as her eyes glowed. Neither were the expression I was expecting. After all, they were just the same swords I'd copied when I fought that swordswoman in Weebtown, I'd fought with them for some while now, it shouldn't have been a surprise. But San spoke out, her eyes glimmering with the excitement of a fangirl.

"You copied Roxxie's mod?!"

I stepped back, bringing my hands forward, flames trickling up around the corners of my vision. _WHAT THE—_ I flailed, acting on reflex, my body kicking and flailing to escape the fire that was pouring from the palms of my hands and crawling up my elbows, chasing me to the sand as I crashed to the ground in a beige cloud. I sat up, the fire still warm in my hands, but not hot, nor painful. My eyes went from hand to hand, watching the flames as they trickled up harmlessly around me. I relaxed my body, the flames quickly dying on their own, even the ones that'd found their way onto my clothes. The only thing burnt was the desert floor beneath me, soft brown scorches left in the sand. I looked up at San and Slenda, the former holding back a fresh deluge of laughter, while the latter pressed her palm against her face, her glasses held in her other hand. Her mouth was crinkled, somewhere between nausea and disgust. _Some confidence you bring, Cyrus. You could be a superhero._

I didn't remember copying Roxxie's mod back in Weebtown, but I did touch it, and I guess that was enough. I hadn't encountered enough modders to really test it, so unfortunately, I just had to roll with whatever it decided to do. _Did it overwrite the swords?_ I thought, turning my hand, watching the fire crawl through my fingers like an upside-down trickle of water. Come to think of it, I hadn't called out the drill I copied in a while. I stared, perplexed at the flame. "Do I not have the swords anymore?"

"You don't know?" Slenda interrogated, her eyes piercing, even through her cracked lenses. I shook my head. "Mods don't really come with instruction manuals…" I said, churning the heat in my hand, shaping it. It both obeyed me and followed its own path, it was more like herding an animal than a power I had control over, "I think I can only copy one mod at once, but I'm not sure… I haven't really tried it."

Roxxie's fire lit up the sand around us, our shadows stretching long, the circle of light crawling slowly across the desert surface. Something didn't seem right about the way the light's glow. Our shadows seemed too long, and felt like they were moving, but I wrote it off as just a trick of the light. San stood admiring the flame in my palm, her eyes a little _too_ lost in it as Slenda looked everywhere but, her mouth a broken grimace.

"Should I put it out?" I asked Slenda, her eyes turning up for a second before looking back at the ground. She shook her head. "We'll need it. It's starting to get dark out, and it might be useful against the bandits."

She ran her hands along her arms, then placed one on her neck, both hands directionless, chasing a shiver that wouldn't soon go away. "It just… Makes me think about Roxxie… What we'll do if we run into her out here, or if she runs into us…"

San squeezed the frantic ex-admin tightly, grinning the wide grin I assumed at times was just tattooed onto her face, "Roxxie got banned, _and_ we killed her, which means she got sent back to your guys' old server. If anything, we should probably worry about getting to the neutral zone right now."

A silence quickly fell over the three of us, Slenda and I looking at each other. Slenda's expression was cold, angry, a shade she never seemed to show around San, but the bite quickly faded from her expression. She placed her hand in San's, nodding reluctantly. "You're right," She sighed, San nuzzling her to free the smile that was starting to form, "We should get going. Any place is better than this desert at night."

"Besides," San smiled, "You've both been avoiding the traps pretty well so far."

The creeper girl walked on, a pop in her step as she moved across the small dunes. I looked over to see that the former admin shared my expression of disbelief, her eyes wide-eyed and silent. I could practically hear the "WHAT" echoing inside her head. We looked the creeper girl up and down, trying to find some kind of zipper or seam in her expression, a cue to laugh. But we couldn't find any. Slenda stepped forward, hands clasped in front of her, squinting at San, "Did, did you just say… Traps…?"

San laughed incredulously, placing a hand on her hip, "You… You can't see the obvious patterns on the ground…?" Slenda gawked in disbelief. "N- No," I interjected, "You're just messing with us, right? One of your pranks? Some morbid creeper humor?"

The creeper girl bent down, her face about half a block off the desert floor. She exhaled, blowing hard across the ground, peeling a layer of sand from the ground and revealing a wooden pressure plate beneath, bits of redstone powder sticking out from its corners. I shined Roxxie's fire towards it, illuminating what I could tell was a pressure plate trigger for some kind of trap. My heart sank. _This was the first I'd noticed… How did San…_ She looked at us with half-lidded eyes. I felt like I was being scolded.

"Hey, what are you doing!" A voice snapped, me and Slenda straightening to a sudden attention. San turned her head; her back still slumped over the trigger of the _apparently_ unimpressive trap, her eyes flat. Sand crunched from a dune to the side of us and a figure stepped out, their face strained in an irritated look and smeared in red paint. They were clad in heavy steal armor, strapped with leather and spiked in various places, their androgynous face peaking in a mohawk that looked slightly burnt. _What in the Nether went on in this server?_ The road warrior glared at us, their lips pursed to the side like an irritated customer.

"I set up a perfectly good trap in the middle of this wasteland, wait for days for someone to come across it, and you _don't_ fall into it? And on top of that, you insult it?! The nerve! _"_

The RPer stuck out their finger at San, prodding the air as they scolded her. San cocked an eyebrow, her expression bare of her usual amusement. She looked more disappointed than anything. San raised her foot, her arms crossed. The leather-clad rebel instantly began stammering, trying to force an apology out as San brought her foot down, stomping the pressure plate into the sandstone below

Arrows shot from hidden dispensers in the sand around us, piercing the rogue from all angles, and quickly reducing them to a bloody heap. They fell to their knees, their expression glossy as San drove her iron sword through their chest. Their body changed into smoke and disappeared into the dry air, their eyes rolling back as they disappeared into the cloud. San regained some of her smirk, her hands on her hips. "Maybe you'll learn to do some R&D next time, punk! Seriously, pressure plates?"

Slenda and I stood stunned, San's composure, her knowledge of traps, everything coming out of the blue and hitting us like a thousand pounds. Just as the smoke cleared from the marauder's corpse however, we heard the sand move again, and I pointed my arm towards the darkness like a torch. Another thief, dressed as a pirate, leapt up from behind the sand mound just beyond the road warrior's, a wild-eyed grin on his face. _Why are they all so close together?! This is a booby-trapped desert, not a street market!_

"YAHARG! I KNEW THAT FOOL **MADHAX79** WOUDLN'T BE ABLE TO CAPTURE YOU! I'VE COME TO REAP THEIR SPOILS, BEWARE THE WRATH OF CAPTAIN EUAAHHGHH–!"

I flicked my arm in the swash-buckler's direction, a ball of flame smashing into him like a cannonball, both the captain and the flames that engulfed him falling quickly behind the mound of sand. "Yeah, yeah," I sighed, watching the black smoke fade and the grey smoke of his despawn rise over the sandy barrier, "We're trying to get somewhere, do ya mind?"

As the smoke cleared, I saw the darkened horizon more clearly, including the shapes beginning to rise from the sand. _Hostile mobs…_ I sighed, _Just what we needed._ Slenda took out a stone shovel, clutching it close to her chest, a contorted expression of fear on her face. San rose to her feet and placed a hand on her shoulder, Slenda shaking at her touch. I moved closer, hoping to offer something to calm Slenda down. San's blue eyes shined at me but the other pair slid to me like cold amethysts, a glare silently cursing my next three generations. Needless to say, I stepped back, changing direction. As I turned, I saw shapes moving on the horizon, hostile mobs crawling from the darkness.

My feet moved mindlessly as I started walking where San had been pointing us, creating a ball of flame in my hand to guide us as we went, "Great, well, let's get going. I just want to–" A hand burst from the ground, clamping my ankle and tripping me. My mind barely registered it, my body falling forward like a ragdoll into the sand. I tried to pull away, only to pull the hand's owner further out of the sand, a face with one wild eye and a mane of crimson hair gazing hungrily through me. She lifted her other arm, a dagger whipping into her palm, "GIMME ALL YOUR RUBIES!"

 _WHAT IN THE NETHER?!_ I tried to wriggle free, the eye-patched thief managing to drive the blade into my leg before I could blast her with Roxxie's fire. Pained and terrified, my body toppled into the sand, my hands clutching my leg. San and Slenda tried to run towards me but were each held back, San tripping over a husk as it emerged from the earth and Slenda activating a pressure plate, her body disappearing into the sound amidst the sound of pistons. Shadows around us began to move, eyes glinting from behind cactuses and rising from mounds of sandy camouflage. I felt a body try to grab me, hands working up under my arms. Instinctively, I tried slipping out, only to see San above me, a crooked smirk on her face. She almost looked like she was having fun. "Come on Cyrus! Fun time is over, we gotta get going!"

 _I wasn't aware fun time had started._

San dragged me to my feet and started picking up speed, pulling me along with my wrist held tightly in her hand. Slenda struggled to pull herself out of the pit she'd fallen into, carving the side of the hole with her shovel, which she then used to beat off a skeleton that was crawling from the ground beside her. She let out a grunt, kicking out from the edge of the artificial crater, her eyes frantically searching the world around her, every side filled with danger. All around us the ground was shaking; arms, heads, and swords were pushing up from the sand, everyone desperate to test their mettle against the powerful travelers. After all, they assumed we were in on it, that we were willful participants in this bizarre game of death. Slenda ran to catch up with us, narrowly avoiding another pit and the grasping hands of an angry ninja to arrive by our side, batting off any adversaries that came close with her shovel. San ran at the front, carving our way forward with her sword while I ran at their side, taking out whoever and whatever I could with Roxxie's fire. But it felt like the entire desert was alive, the very ground itself sending antibodies to devour us, and I didn't think that a few fireballs (and terribly inaccurate ones at that) were going to protect us.

San pushed onward, crying out with a passion that seemed fueled by the chaos, unlike ours, "Come on guys, it's just over that hill! Probably!"

"PROBABLY?! YOU MEAN YOU'RE NOT SURE?!" I cried, tossing a fireball at a skeleton, knocking it back only for its arrow to firmly plant itself in my shoulder.

"I have a mental map!" San chimed, shrugging, "But those are statistically the worst kind of map, so–!" The pain throbbed in my wounds, my arm and leg both shrieking at me as I ran, San's shape ahead of me like a beacon. She seemed to glow, her body dark but the sky around her illuminated like a halo, the horizon beaming at her. I rubbed my eyes on my shirt, trying to get out the sweat, sand, or whatever it was messing with my vision, only for the glow to persist. It wasn't San's light though, it was the light of torches.

San dashed towards the light of the neutral zone, her body disappearing over the horizon, Slenda and I hustling behind, struggling to catch up. I looked back to see thieves among the masses throw down their weapons, cursing the night sky as we neared safety. Others fought against the mobs that had changed targets, the mob of dangers convulsing, attacking itself. Distance between us began to grow and for a moment, the world finally growing as the sand rose up around us.

Except the sand wasn't rising; we were falling.

The sand below us dropped out into a low basin where a town was dug out, the ground coming up at me like a swift kick. My body battered as I rolled down the sand, every inch of the slope finding a part of my body to smash into before I finally came to rest on the cold sandstone tiles below. Slenda had already fallen in a heap by my side, San towering over the two of us. Of course, she knew the drop was coming.

"Come on guys! Don't die now, we're practically in the speakeasy!"

Her face beamed, her body covered in sweat, dripping down her shoulders and into the front collar of her tank top. Sore, I lifted my head, my eyes tracing the fragile outline of the neutral zone. Under the wall of the sand, the sandstone buildings wavered on their foundations, the decimated structures like the rising dead. Slenda began to push herself up, digging her shovel into the ground and using it to bring herself to her knees. She surveyed the broken buildings of the town before us, a familiar look of dismay in her eyes.

"What… Happened to the town…?" She gulped, shakily rising to her feet, she trudged up to the ruins, searching for a flash of movement, anything that we could consider a sign of life. There were only enough torches to create a dull glow, and a few testificates wandering in the distant streets. They were a docile non-player race that squatted in destroyed towns, but they weren't the hospitality I was expecting. Slenda's hands tightened on the shovel in her arms, wringing it, "Were we too late…?"

San tilted her head.

"Nah, I don't think he'd be closed yet." She responded simply.

Slenda looked back at her, a worried look in her eyes. "I'm sorry, San. I don't know when this happened but… Maybe we can rest in these ruins…"

San chuckled and shook herself free of Slenda's gaze, tapping up the cracked sandstone staircase of a nearby building. Slenda and I followed suit, stepping into the ruined room. Slenda looked at me uneasily. The creeper girl smirked, pressing against a broken wall with her elbow. The floor beside her slid open, pulled by an unseen piston. From within there was the warm glow of torchlight, the hole below the sandstone lined with wood planks.

" _It's aspeakeasy, guys. Of course it has a hidden entrance."_ San smirked at us, "You guys can sleep out on the sandstone and broken glass all you want, but I'm going inside and getting a drink."

San slipped naturally into the warm glow of the hole below, the piston stamping the floor back into place behind her. We heard the soft thumping of boots on wood as she slid down the ladder, zipping away. Slenda and I stood in a temporary silence; the special kind of silence that filled a room once San left; the emptiness left by the absence of her energy. Slenda broke the silence with a giggle, her hand quickly cupping her mouth. She tried to hide the shy smile that had broken across her face. "Notch, is that _two_ times today that we've been scolded by San?"

A sudden burst of laughter cracked the flat expression my face had settled into, Slenda looking at me with eyes that flickered in dull purple embers. Her eyes were still red and swollen from crying, but now they were pushed up by an endearing grin. She was just as tired as I was, but she was more than happy. I guess San just tended to do that to her.

"I guess you're right." I admitted in amused disbelief. Slenda sighed, shaking her head as she tapped the button and stepped down into the entryway. She put her foot on the first rung, then the next, descending slowly. Her eyes looked forward longingly as she fell out of view, "She sure is something, huh."

"San?" I asked, starting my own descent. I couldn't help but let out a chuckle. Sounds began to trickle up from below us. The sounds of banter, laughter, the clinking of glass. The dull roar of hospitality beckoning us. The piston shut back into place behind us, the sky disappearing, and with it the hostile, arid breath of the desert. "Yeah. She's definitely _something."_


	6. Chapter 6: The Lowered Bar

Tired from the chaos of Weebtown, the fear of the desert night, and the pain throbbing in our bodies, our feet finally met the hardwood floors of the speakeasy. I let a long breath escape my lungs, the stings in my shoulder and ankle like quiet reminders. Amber lamplight bent through glasses and shined off golden tools and armor, the whole room awash with a sunset glow. Along the opposite wall beyond the tables of patrons was a long counter where a stoic figure stood, his head lifting to acknowledge us as we came in. He seemed to recognize San, a tired grin cracking his expression as she bounded across the bar floor. _This place… May not be that bad._ I thought, a smile finding its way onto my face.

San waved to us as she tromped off, yelling, "I'll be right back! There's someone I gotta talk to!"

Slenda held out a hand to stop her, but she was already off, bounding across the floorboards of the underground saloon like it was her own personal playground. We walked by the tables where some players sat, drank, and joked, others spilling out of their chairs and danced drunkenly in the aisles. It wasn't peaceful per se, but it was homely. Honestly… I could see myself staying, if it wasn't for the fact it was filled with the crazy thieves from the desert. The pirate, the road warrior, the ninjas, the vagabonds; all were there, drinking and cheering and singing without a care. San sailed past patrons, high-fiving as she went, the desert's thieves greeting her as she went. And by name. Slenda looked at me, a weak smile veiling her concern, "I didn't know San knew so many people… Outside our server."

"Yeah…" I said, cocking my head, "Didn't you find her right after she spawned…?" Slenda shrugged, pulling a smile over her face, but I could see worry twitch at the corner of her eye. "I… I Guess not."

We began moving once more, feet tromping slowly, loudly against the floorboards. I eavesdropped on groups as we passed, the subtle unease growing. "I'm gonna find that fire modder ASAP." I heard one of them boast, throwing back a drink. Another let out an enthusiastic squeal, "Oh, if I can get my hands on them…" Slenda and I looked to each other, staying close as we moved forward, looking for a way to move around the tables without rousing too much attention.

Searching for safety, my eye caught the white bow of an apron, my heart warming. My eyes scanned the full body attached to it, curvy, wearing a worn turquoise tee and a pair of jeans, their topped with a head of dark brown hair, tossed around gleefully as they spoke. There seemed to be lines on their arms, _stitches?_ But I didn't care. I was a tired loser in desperate need of a drink, and the sight of a wait staff was like seeing Notch himself. Even if up close she was starting to smell… _Like a zombie?_

I tugged on the straps of the waitresses apron, letting out a weak, "Excuse me," before she turned around, a sudden spark of fear running through me. "Welcome to the Sandy Speakeasy!" The zombie's voice chimed with a rehearsed glee. The skin on her face was a deep brown, but with the slight green tint (and moldy smell) of a zombie's. Her face was lined with stitches; one line from the corner of her smile to her curly hairline and another went around her neck, one across her nose and several more spiraling down her arms and under her clothes. A curly tuft of hair was pulled over one eye, (if there was even an eye ther). She gleamed at us, "The name's Fantasia, but you can call me Fanny. Fancy a seat, loves?"

Slenda and I looked at the zombie girl, then each other. Maybe we'd just seen too many zombies that we were starting to see them in people; she was just a smelly girl with stitches, right? The moldy waitress laughed, knocking her palm against the back of her head, "That's a fair reaction I suppose, I am the bleedin' undead after'oll. I get it a lot," So… She _was_ a zombie? But, zombies weren't a thing you could tame, they were something that you found in caves and burned in the sunlight, "But above all else, I'm a server here at the Sandy Speakeasy, and I'd be glad to find you a seat or get you something to drink…"

Slenda fell forward, her arms pulling down her heavy body as gust of air left her lungs, her scrawny frame deflated. "Please, get me a seat and get me some booze, or potions, or whatever you have here. It's been a long week."

The zombie grinned and pulled us along, taking us by the large mass of tables and crowds of patrons. The thieves we'd met in the desert, namely the eyepatch girl, pirate, and road warrior, waved eagerly at us as we passed as if they were old friends. Or, even stranger, like they were our fans. Now I was even more confused than before. "They're pretty excited to meet you, those blokes," Fanny smiled, gesturing towards the group, "You're all they've talked about since they respawned. You're getting talked about by quite a few folks actually."

The dark hold the desert had on my mind had finally started to fade, my sense returning to me. _That's right,_ I took a breath, _They're just RPers. It's all a game to them, which makes them only partially insane. I'm actually safe for once._ We were in the eye of the storm. My eyes drifted across the many faces of the patrons, almost all of them smiling, all laughing or playing or relaxing. There were only a few that weren't having as much fun, and out of those they were either asleep, in some kind of minor verbal squabble or… Staring right at me.

"Is he a fan of mine too?" I asked Fanny, pointing to the thief. Fantasia followed my finger, shivering as her eye connected with his. He was a thief in a long blue coat and a blue fedora, adorned with a long white feather. The blonde hair that swirled around his face was in stark contrast with the black mask warn over his mouth and nose. Only an eye was exposed, and that eye was burning a hole through me. "Bloody… That's **VillainFan42**. Don't make any eye contact with him, he's been preying on our patrons all week."

 _Preying?_ I grabbed the wound in my shoulder, facing forward. _He couldn't do anything to me here._ I repeated in my mind. _Don't worry about him._ Just then, I felt a cold, ghostly breath on my neck.

"Excuse me," The voice quivered, less stoic than I'd expect. In fact, it sounded squeaky, and anxious. I wasn't sure how he had gotten behind me so fast, "I- I run an RP just outside of this server called Shards of Light. It's a four-player role-playing map in the vein of the classic Final Fan…" I tried to block the RPer out as we strode through the speakeasy, growing ever closer to the bar. _So this is the other danger of the server…_ I thought, _Even out of character. I preferred the stabbing honestly._ Slenda cast an uneasy look to me, avoiding the RPer, worried that something would happen. Though in retrospect, I think she was more worried about what I would do, "…the floating islands of Primor and the underground cavern cities of Dalvet…"

"Excuse me," I cut in, facing my stalker. To be honest, it didn't sound that bad. I might have actually wanted to play it if it wasn't for the fact that I was currently homeless and playing enthusiastic third wheel to a manic creeper girl and a moody ex-admin. His line of sight dipped below mine, both dejected and enraged, "I'm injured, and tired, and cold, and I just wanna get a drink. I've been wandering from place to place for _months_ and I just want to relax for like, five minutes. So can you please get off my case?" I heard Slenda sigh loudly.

The phantom thief's eyelids creased, his lone eye squinting towards the floor. He spoke hastily, "No, no that's fine. I understand." His voice weak and nervous but his eyes filled with indignation. He stood in place, his ghostly outline becoming tangible once more. He became smaller as we pulled away, eventually eclipsed the moving crowd. Behind me, the bar was now filling my vision, the bartender no longer a distant figure. And neither was San, who was sitting on a nearby barstool, elbow propped on the counter. The zombie leapt towards San, her arms snapping shut around her like a steel trap.

"Siiiss~! Where the bloody Nether have you been!"

I rose from the hardwood, rising next to a Slenda who was now frozen in place. Questions began to trickle into my mind. First a slow pour, then a splash, then a flood. _Sister..?_ The zombie waitress affectionately bit San on the head and San hissed back, punching her playfully in the stomach, _A zombie sister..?!_ The two fumbled on the barstools and counter until they eventually tumbled to the floor amidst uproarious laughter, Slenda's hands clutching the trim of her sweater. _In a server we never new she'd been to before yesterday?_ The ex-admin was filled with a creeping fear, moreso than when we saw the thieves, moreso than when we were being chased through the desert.

"Feck, you look petrified. Please tell me that me wait staff didn't take a piece out of ya."

Our attention was suddenly taken by the bartender, his gruff voice commanding our eyes. He had a lean but strong build, with a face covered in faded scars and scrapes and rounded out with a faded beard. All seemed to compliment the sword that poked out from behind his back. His apron seemingly cut from a leather tunic. He glared down at me, the gleam in his dark brown eyes surprisingly hospitable. A burly warrior dad.

"Oh come off it Dustin~! I just did it that one time…"

"That "one time" happened twice and was barely a week ago." The bartender grunted, raising an eyebrow towards his cannibalistic wait staff. Fantasia's accent seemed to be from the Great Server Britannica and the bartender's from a smaller nearby server… Craggy Island maybe, the Irish server? Everything about him seemed to have an air of mystery, though I suppose that wasn't too different from Fanny or, now, San.

We shook our heads in response to his question, the bartender breathing a sigh of relief. He opened a chest on the wall and started sifting through ingredients, seemingly reading our expressions as he did so. "You two are San's friends, right?" He nodded towards the stools, "Is it a drink you'll be having? I can set you up, I make the best drinks in the whole server." Slenda took the closest barstool and I took one next to her, San and Fanny still on the ground, reminiscing and playing about below.

"My name's Slenda. And I'm not San's friend." She clarified, her tone biting through a fabricated smile. San chuckled, shooting up from the ground to put her arm around the ex-admin. "Nope!" San added, Slenda's expression cracked by a weak grin, her cheeks warming, "She's my cuddle buddy!"

A shiver ran through her cuddle buddy, a wavy smile creasing her lips and some light blush in her cheeks. Cuddle buddy didn't seem to be the word she'd like to use, but she didn't mind being called that either. Fantasia's eye lit up, shining as she clapped her hands in excitement, "Bloody Nether! You been gone for just a few months and you got yourself a gal? Next thing you're gonna tell me is that you're famous too and this bloke here is your personal henchman."

San blushed, "Well, not to brag but–" Fanny squeezed her tightly, her frail, dark cheeks brushing a bright pink. They seemed happy enough, but I couldn't help to be filled with questions; he only ones who tended to call each other brothers or sisters were those who spawned together or nearby, but they had completely different accents, completely different clothing. _Also was she actually about to call me her henchman?_

"And uh, what about you all? What's your deal?" I asked, looking around at the three. They were certainly a motley crew (which says a lot coming from one of us); a grizzled adventurer tending bar alongside a waitress with a taste for human flesh and a terrorist with a heart of gold. And all kept secret by San, "San's never mentioned either of you."

Slenda straightened her back, hand balled nervously into a fist on the counter. Dustin rolled his eyes, mixing the ingredients he had grabbed into glasses and small cups, each unique, one to each of us. He seemed invested, but I'm not sure if he was as surprised as the rest of us. Fantasia tilted her head, smiling curiously, if a bit worried, as she waited for her sister's answer. San fidgeted with her hair, her eyes adrift in the floorboards.

"Well I… It's not like I was hiding my past, I just… Never mentioned it and acted like it never existed…" San chuckled nervously. It felt so strange to see her legitimately put off by a subject. She seemed to want to leap at everything, work in every inappropriate word, every pointless upbeat anecdote. Why was she being so shy now?

"I found the two of them and did my best to take them in. The creeper likes to run off though, as you can probably guess. I'm like their father, I suppose." San scrunched her nose, squinting at Dustin and quickly shaking her head.

"Nah, no, that's weird. I don't have any parents. _No parents,"_ She repeated, brushing her hair over her ear, "But Fanny and I are still sisters though… Dusty doesn't make us stay, so I like to explore, play with TNT, make friends," Slenda tilted her head, her twisted brow refusing to straighten. The strands of San's ramblings were being stitched together in here head, slowly but surely. But there were still patches missing, "And it's just… Nice to start over…"

Dustin slapped a palm against is face, placing a full glass in front of me. It didn't even occur to me at the time that I hadn't ordered anything. He glared at San, "Bloddy ell, if this one's willing to sleep with you, d'ya really think she's gonna be that put off by you being raised by creepers? 'Snot exactly like you're subtle anyway."

Sans' eyes grew wide, burning fiery holes in the bartender's face as he disengaged, going back to his drinks. Slenda's face washed with pale shades of pink and red. Fanny patted San on the back, shrugging as if to say _"Oopsies! That happens. Sometimes you just happen to hide the fact that you were raised in a cave by monsters to your significant other."_ All I could do was look on as this unfolded before me.

Something in Slenda's expression broke, her body craning slowly. She placed her hands on San's nearest shoulder, staring deep into her eyes and whispering in a shrill, exasperated voice, " _You were WHAT?"_ Fantasia grinned brightly, "Oh yeah, the cave! Back when Dustin was still a cool adventurer and not just a stuffy bartender who tells me not to eat people."

"San, why would you hide something like that from me?" Slenda questioned, her hands still clutching San's shoulders. San receded, her eyes drawn to her own lap. I was still shocked too, sure. But I didn't think it was something to be that ashamed of. She practically wore her creeper-ness on a sleeve, "I don't think any less of you for being some… Wild cave child. If anything, it explains a lot."

San broke away, wriggling far enough to loosen herself from Slenda's grasp, a smile scribbled across her face, and sloppily at that. "It's not that I was raised there, it's that… Well, a lot happened there… I really don't wanna talk about it." San lifted her eyes up to me, then hid them again. _Was it really that personal?_

Dustin slid a glass to her, the final out of the three of us. I hadn't even had time to look at mine before San started chugging the mug before her, back swiveled away from us. Slenda sighed, slumping slightly in her stool. She casually took a sip from the cup next to her, looking at it suspiciously before placing it on the counter for Dustin to refill. I looked to my own glass, filled with a dark brown liquid, and brought it to my lips. Dustin gave me a nod, encouraging me to try it, and I took a sip. I was instantly intoxicated. Inside the glass _was_ milk, but flavored with something cocoa, giving it the sweetness of cookies or injuries began to heal as my hunger and thirst were quenched, the chocolate milk seemingly disappearing as I gulped down every drop.

"Dustin, sir…" I sighed, my broken open by pure awe, "You are a god."

"Hear that, San? Boy thinks I'm Notch himself." He smirked at San. She was already on her second glass, thick lumps travelling down her throat as she used her free hand to flip off the bartender. Slenda took a sip from the small cup she'd been given, commenting that it was just like the sake she had in Weebtown. Dustin handed me another glass of chocolate milk and I drank it just as quickly as the first, the bartender quietly priding himself as he watched. "Suppose it's not a bad mod, being able to mix the perfect drinks."

"Pffffftt," San blew a raspberry, the force of her own breath nearly knocking her off her stool. She looked like a leaf in the wind. I didn't imagine she'd be that much of a lightweight considering how quick she was to drink, "Your mods frickin' _ooookay_. I have a henchman with frickin' fIRE pOWERS!"She slurred, dangling a finger in my direction as she sloppily polished up her third mug, her body toppling sideways onto the counter, than sliding to the ground. She uttered something like "oops" as she fell, her legs still dangling over the top of her stoop. _Hopefully the floorboards listen to her drunk ramblings._ Dustin didn't seem surprised, instead looking at me.

"Dat's right, henchman, I've been hearing a lot about you," _I guess that's just my name now. Great. I was hoping nobody noticed,_ "Hear you've been busy. Been here only a few days and you've already torched both ends of the desert."

I looked, befuddled, at the bartender. Slenda shared my reaction. I would check San's but, well, I wasn't even sure she was conscious. _But we've only been here a day. And we haven't gone far._ I thought.

"Players said that about me…?" I asked, hands pressed against the counter, leaning forward. Dustin glared suspiciously.

"Yeah well, they've been talking about a skinny fire modder, heavy coat, around your age. Long dark skin and hair, either a girl or a stressed twink—though I think we can say pretty confidently now that it's the latter."

And just when I was starting to like this place.

I groaned, splaying my palm against my face. Slenda mouthed her name, Dustin simply watching, bemused. Slenda threw back another cup of sake. Another fire-using griefer, one with dark skin and long dark hair. A dark jacket billowing around her… Eyes and mouth streaming with fire. Smoke filled the sky as laughter echoed around me, hot sweat dripping down my face. So close to death, so many stories up. Just when we thought we'd beaten her, her face managed to creep back into our minds, ruining the first true refuge we'd found. I almost felt sick, cold sweat beading on my forehead. Dustin nodded, exhaling coldly. "Feck…"

"Take it from your reactions that there are two fire starters roamin' the server then?" Dustin asked. I nodded, "Do you know her? She a friend?"

Slenda and I glanced at each other. Roxxie had only been a mentor of mine for a short while, a superior position that lasted around a week or two at most. But her and Slenda were supposed to be longtime friends. And yet, I saw the same lack of confidence in her expression. She gulped, placing a hand flat on the counter, reaching into the collar of her sweater and pulling out stacks and stacks of emeralds with the other. I was lost for a few moments, but then I understood. Slenda spoke in a stern voice to the bartender, who went into the back to fetch her request.

"Fire resistance potions," She demanded, "Now."

I startled up from the counter, looking up at the chiseled form of the bartender before me, glowing bottles in both of his hands. "Do you… Expect us to fight her?" I asked, gazing worriedly at the ex-admin.

"Doesn't really matter what you do or not," Dustin said, passing the potions in between his hands and Slenda's, "The truth is…" He placed a wooden block on the table, which we eyed curiously. There was a sinking feeling in my gut.

"Mods bend the world. Slightly at first. "He put no weight on the block, his body failing to shift in any way but the movement of his fingers. Wood crunched inwards, fibers snapping loudly as they splintered, the entire block beginning to implode."Upshot of this is that it can bend back, snap back into place. But, keep applying pressure…"Familiar cracks began to appear in the wood, the same black cracks that spread across a stone as you struck it with a pick or wood when you broke it with an axe. I saw myself in the black in-between, the broken, missing space, realization beginning to sink in. The wood block broke, pixels raining across the bar as Dustin picked up the minaturized wood that was left over."

And you break the rules that keep the world together. You make a hole that you can fall through. You crash. Only Herobrine knows what comes after."

"It must be pretty hard to crash though, right? You'd have to do a lot of, uh… Bending."

The barkeep looked down on Slenda with a cold kind of empathy, as if he was looking in a mirror. Keeping his eyes on Slenda, he turned his head and pulled his collar down, exposing a crack eerily similar to the one that had appeared on the block. Slenda gawked at him, her eyes squinting at the wound. It was eerily placed, seemingly hovering just above his skin but not on it. I wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't staring right at it.

He gestured around us, my eyes quickly scanning the speakeasy. Every patron had a drink in their hands, and a unique drink at that. I hadn't thought about it before now. About those holding the drinks as they left, or those who had the drinks in their bodies. His essence was spread all across the bar and all across this dessert. Reality was bending out for miles around him in small ways, and the cracks were showing.

"May not look like much, but it's more than enough. If I'm on the edge I can't imagine what that demon's done to herself."

"Well… We're hoping we can talk her down… Before all that…" Slenda exhaled, "These are just a precaution." Dustin looked judgingly at her. He didn't believe her. As they finished their transaction, the bartender examined at the gems for a moment, cocking his head, "Why are these all, uh…?"

Slenda quickly apologized, "Oh, sorry. I picked these up from my personal chest after the fires in Weebtown. Roxxie uh… Did a lot there too."

"Weeb—ugh," Dustin made a face, dumping the emeralds into a chest below the counter, his hands placed on his hips, "Great, I'll have to sanitize these then… Ah well… There's beds in back if you lot need to nap or reset spawn. This should cover all tree of ya, plus the potions. I'll mark a map with where your friend was last seen."

The ex-admin rubbed the space between her eyes, slinking off her stool, her eyes drifting aimlessly for a moment before finding me. She was in a daze. I think we all were. Fanny had already disappeared, heading off to wait tables while we sorted everything out. San was still on the floor.

"I think I'm uh… Gonna turn in." She sighed. I nodded, wearily, "I know it's early but… I think I've had enough of today. I want it to be tomorrow." Slenda paused for a moment, her eyes searching around within their sockets. They seemed to drift unconsciously to San, only to see her still on the floor, curled up into a ball. A smile creased her lips. She was quietly singing some trashy rock song to herself. I wanted to poke fun at her masquerade, or maybe just ask her about her history, but all we were getting out of her was,

 _"We can show the world what we can do… zzzzzzzzzz… You right next to me and me right next to you… zzzzzzzz… Pushing on through–"_

Slenda smiled, "I'll carry her." She said, lifting San over her shoulder. It looked almost impossible given her small frame, but it didn't seem like the first time it had happened. It wasn't hard to imagine them carrying each other home after long nights of drinking and trying to ignore the world. She started walking, nearly passing me, before making a face and turning to me, "You, uh… Don't have to come with us, if you don't want. I understand it's not really your problem, and you really just want a place to relax, so–" I put a hand on Slenda's shoulder and gave her a playful push, nearly toppling the two-person girl tower. "Come on, you can't act like that. I'm invested!" I jeered, Slenda offering a weak smile. Then, strangely enough, she hugged me. She quickly let go, smiling shyly before turning away.

"Thank you."

I heard San's quiet whisper sing, _"Until the battle's wooooooon~."_ And the two disappeared behind a nearby door. I was soon to follow, finding myself a cot nearby theirs and passing out almost immediately. It was hard to think of anything but the fire that night, and it was easy to think of running away. But in a way, that was comforting. I actually felt like I was heading towards something now rather than running, for the first time in a long while.

In the morning, we began our trek out into the desert, the map Dustin gave us rolled in my hand. Slenda carried San on her back, somewhere between hungover and asleep. She sighed, a weak smile carved into her lips. I opened the rolled parchment I ran my fingers across it and across the X where Roxxie was last seen. "Giants Way…" I said aloud, "Sounds cool at least." We were moving towards what was likely a disaster, like an unplanned trap, but at the very least it would be interesting. I shook my head, looking towards the waves of heat on the horizon, smiling. The waves were ghostly… Blue…

"Cyrus, do you see–"

 _Click!_

My smile quickly faded, my eyes peeling wide as a shadow rose from the horizon line. I recognized the wispy blue outline all too well, even though I'd only seen it once before. I went to call Slenda's name, to grab her by the arm and ask her if she saw it too, but it was too late. Everything happened in a second. A pressure plate sounded off, activated by one of our footfalls. Before we could react, the sand around us dropped, the horizon rising high above our heads as the ground consumed us, a veil of sand forming a wall around us as we tumbled into the dark. The light of dawn was only a prick in the ceiling above us, fall damage throbbing in our bones _,_ our lungs choked with sand. We heard a voice call from above, a nervous voice, creaking in an attempt at intimidation. Slenda and I both groaned in unison. _"Of all the…"_

"So, uh… Now that I've given you some time to think," The voice called, unfittingly frail, "You guys wanna try Shards of Light…?"


	7. Chapter 7: How to Advertise an RP

"I swear to Notch…" Slenda groaned. She tried to push off the ground, her arms wobbling under her weight. San falling on top of her didn't make it any easier. My mind hazy from the fall I tried to move, only for a stabbing pain to shoot from my leg. The limb was twisted by the fall, my right ankle bent at an odd angle and a crooked angle broken into my left. _Fall damage…_ I thought to myself.

As my body fell into a helpless, sore lull, my eyes began to roam around the walls of our prison. It was a tall chamber with walls carved from ancient sandstone and the ceiling pouring dust around us in a veil. The walls were lit sparsely with torches and lined with texts in a strange language, likely stolen from a desert temple somewhere just to fit the aesthetic, or maybe it was just conveniently in the ground. We had landed in a small sandy pit in the center, the light from the surface contained in a small square high above our heads. Our captor stood under two torches in front of us, a golden eye glinting softly from under the tip of his hat. He was thin, his body draped in a blue coat that extended his silhouette, his lengthy blonde hair spilling out from under his feathered hat. The thief looked more at place in an opera house than in an underground lair, especially with the black mask that covered his mouth and nose.

"Please..?" **VillainFan42** 's quivered. Slenda and I sighed. His voice always broke the façade, "I'd appreciate if you could play my game, I could really use the feedback…"

San rose groggily from Slenda's midsection, her eyes half-lidded as her hands skidded on the piles of sand, her body rolling over Slenda's like a drunk slime, "Oh, I have some feedback for you… VF, was it?" San grumbled. _Waking up just when you can get your two cents in?_ I thought, scoffing, _Where have I seen that before?_ She clawed at the sand to pull herself forward, "Let's start with the visual representation."

The thief stepped back for a moment, his eye moving amongst the features of the room. Begrudgingly, let her continue.

"Great use of pistons for the drop, visually stunning… But the presentation!" She grunted, pulling her jaggedly misshapen legs out from under her so-called friend, "There was no buildup! No foreshadowing or bait, I felt more surprised than anything."

 _Well, you were supposedly unconscious at the time. But go on._

"Two out of five."

The phantom thief gasped, his eye wide. He looked shattered. The thief pulled his cape closer, his strained expression clear even with his mouth covered.

"B- But, it's a trap! Isn't it supposed to be unexpected?"

San waggled a finger at VF. I wondered if she remembered we were his captives. Notch, he didn't seem like he remembered either, "No no no, there's got to be some theatricality to it. You can't just pull the rug out from under a group like that. You need to make them afraid, let them doubt their senses, get them really looking over their shoulders! Then, when they're at they're most vulnerable, you wait someone to say something like "It was probably nothing" or "What's the worst that could happen?" and WHAM! That's when you do it." The thief shifted himself, turning his body just enough to face away from us. He placed a hand on his chin, tapping as he thought to himself. His hand drifted, pulling nervously at his mask. A single eye darted to us and his whole body flinched in response, almost as if he'd forgotten the three of us were laying broken in a heap on his floor.

"O- Okay, that makes sense… But wasn't it cool when I stole all your equipment and items…?" He muttered in a quiet voice. My arm flinched, my palm patting an empty pocket. Slenda's eyes grew wide as she reached into the collar of her sweater, her hands grabbing at air as she grew frantic. San nodded, her lower lip out. She stroked her chin, admiring the new facet of our situation.

I slammed my fist in the sand, glaring at VF, "What the Nether did you do to all our potions?! And my pickaxe!"

VF pulled at his cape in an attempt to throw his silhouette, but it just flapped feebly, the thief sighing as it fell at his side. Grumbling, he put out an arm, a ghostly mist curling up from his sleeve. The mist stretched, wisps sharpening into the form of fingers. It was more like a claw then a hand, but it moved fluidly and naturally through the air as if it was a part of him. Like an animal's tail. He let a miniaturized pickaxe fall from his sleeve, the phantom hand catching it.

"This is my mod." He said simply, "It's like a… A ghost hand. It's kinda useful." His voice was still low. The situation began to set in, _He's definitely a threat… Not just an RPer or nerd, he's a real modder,_ I thought, muscles in my stomach tightening, _Though, he really does need to work on his presentation._

Slenda snapped at him, demanding our items back, but he only continued to mutter quietly about his trap, ignoring her. Honestly it was hard to tell whether he was talking to us or the floor, "I'll try to do better next time. This went way better than my last trap though. I sealed these two adventurers in a tank of rising water where they couldn't use their weapons-only one of them could swim—I thought it was pretty daring, but afterwards they said it was just so-so… I'm optimistic about my next one at least."

I sighed loudly, realizing we'd returned to the trap workshop. I looked at Slenda. She was fuming, protesting sternly to a deaf audience. San and VF were too busy discussing traps.

"Yeah, that'd be an automatic zero out of five for me." San said, laying her head on her shoulder, a confident smirk trying to mask the pain in her legs, "Too much water."

The thief nodded thoughtfully and thanked San, the creeper girl making a short bow. Slenda coughed, calling VF's attention. He looked at her in started confusion for a few moments before his eye lit up, his body swinging around.

"Oh! Crapbaskets, I almost forgot!"

VillainFan pressed a button on the wall behind him, the sand around us spilling and shaking as machines moved out of sight. Slenda glanced around nervously, trying to right herself on broken legs so she could run. San beamed, scanning the room, absolutely delighted at the new addition. Before we could run or even know what we were running from, a ring of iron bars rose up from the ground around us, three blocks high on all sides, sealing us in.

Our captor stood before us with a sinister pride, knowing we could do little to escape. I thought of mining my way out, but the emptiness of my pocket struck me suddenly, my heart sinking. Before we could have just broken through and limped away, mined our way out of the underground, but now…

"This isn't half bad!" San cheered, knocking on the bars. I swear I could see VF blush.

The thief hit another button in the wall that was next to the other one, this one causing the wall behind him to open up, a door-sized chunk of the wall recessing into the sandstone around it. _How long was he putting this together?_ I questioned, _This place is a fully functioning secret base!_

The thief turned, his ghostly hand extending from his body, twisting off his shoulder, tossing the pickaxe he'd stolen at the floor so that it planted firmly in the ground. His body began to disappear in the darkness of the doorway, the light of the connected room blotted out. He cast a golden eye over his shoulder.

"No mercy, eh?" San asked, smirking.

VF chuckled, taking a long stride through the door and throwing up the end of his coat so that it flapped dramatically behind him. _Crap_. It actually worked this time.

"Mercy is for wimps."

The door slammed, leaving us in the amber darkness of dim torches, the walls flickering, claustrophobic. There was an authentic pressure as he left. I started to feel unsure as I stared around at the walls, my mind pushing escape scenarios that I knew wouldn't work. I began to doubt that we would ever leave.

"Well, at least he left us alone, maybe he's not that smart after all…" Slenda said weakly, pulling herself across the mound she laid on, sand spilling around her in small clouds. San shrugged, "I dunno, I thought he was pretty cool at the end there."

The blocks in the wall moved suddenly, the shape of a hat and a single eye poking around the corner.

"R- Really?" Our captor asked nervously.

Slenda stared, bemused. Her cuddle buddy flashed VF a thumbs-up and he disappeared back around the corner. Slenda's head fell into her open hands, "We're being held captive by a loser…"

We surveyed the cage, finding it without cracks or openings, the iron bars freshly made. It would take a while to punch through them… But it should still be possible. I propped myself up against the wall and delivered and swung my first hard at the bars, only for it to softly bounce off, almost like there was a thick padding around the bar. I tried to grip the steel only for my fingers to freeze a pixel away from it, unable to make true contact.

"What the…?"

"Aaand he has a command block active," Slenda groaned, "Fantastic."

I stared at the bars, imagining the protective field around them. Command blocks were a thing I'd only heard of, before now. They worked like admin commands, but were on all the time and anchored to a block. Like tiny robotic gods you could keep hidden in the floor. They could teleport large groups of people, give anyone within their field of influence items, and, unfortunately for us, make blocks in their vicinity unbreakable.

San reclined against the bars, "Dang, that ghost boy really turned this whole thing around, didn't he? I can dig it."

"Ugh, we could always kill each other. Whoever gets hit will go back to the Sandy Speakeasy and can come rescue the rest of us." Slenda posited. I shivered.

"Not... A great option?" I squeaked, Slenda rolling her eyes.

I sighed, my mind beginning to skim through scenarios, flipping swiftly through plans and discarding them just as quick, my body sinking into the corner made by two bars. _Can't dig under, can't climb over, can't go through… Would rather not die_. It was hard to find a truly practical option. I went back to the desert, retracing our encounters, trying to think of what mod I had. _Nope…_ I thought, blowing out a disheartened puff of air, _Dusty's drinks. Not exactly useful here._

Pulling myself vertically along the bars, I got myself back to a sitting position, holding out my hand. I focused, a shiver running through my arm. "That's right, you still have Dustin's mod. At least we'll be able to heal this stupid fall damage." Slenda smiled weakly. Her eyes were unmoving. "Drinks!" San cheered, throwing her arms up.

Smoke poured down my sleeve and into my hand. _Is it for the glass?_ I thought, my head tilting. It spun into a round shape, sticking to the inside of my hand but never fully taking shape. The smoke stayed wispy, ghostly. Slenda's face lit up.

"Cyrus..!"

I turned over my hand, the mist flowing around, following it like a shadow. It began to peel away, taking its own shape. The shape of a hand.

"You don't have Dusty's mod anymore. You have VF's."

The realization was immediate and electric, as was the smile sparking across my face. My eyes tagged the space on the wall where the phantom thief had vanished, the buttons sat less than a block away. I looked at the ghostly claw shifting gently in my sleeve, tugged at by the air.

With as much dramatic flair as I could muster I threw my arm between two bars, towards the cage button, casting the ghost hand towards it like a hook. The hand flew over to the button, pausing in the air just in front of it and pressing it with an extended index finger, the bars around us beginning to sink into the sand as pistons chugged along in the walls. Adrenaline was flowing through me, my hand clenched in a confident ball, but our escape wasn't over yet. And our legs were still broken. My eyes flashed to the pickaxe on the floor, then to San. Without words, we set a plan into motion.

Slenda pulled the pickaxe from the floor and San pushed herself up against the wall, crouching just under the buttons. I crawled up next to her, joining my crippled crew. Quick taps of boots on sandstone echoed from the other side of the wall as the thief came to investigate the source of the mechanical noises, mumbling nervously to himself as he went. Inside of a second, the blocks retracted into the wall, VF stepped out, and Slenda swung her pickaxe at his legs, the blade hooking his leg below the knee and sending him to the sandstone where San pinned him, throwing her body on top of his like a playful dogpile.

Like a reflex, his phantom hand leapt from the collar of his coat, sailing for Slenda's throat. I cast mine out at the same time, my phantom limb snaring his, sending the two tumbling to the ground where they intertwined, both of their forms becoming confused and inert as their masses dissipated into each other. Neither of them were completely physical, but they seemed to be able to subdue each other. I wasn't quite sure how it worked, but it was good enough for me. Slenda rifled through the thief's pockets, tossing us morsels of food as she restored her own inventory. The food tasted like sand, but my bones didn't care. They snapped back into place, healing as good as new, my stomach and health both topped off. VF huffed impatiently.

"How was I supposed to know you could copy mods…?" He griped, "Doesn't this break the whole foreshadowing rule, San?"

The creeper girl put a finger to her chin, considering it, but Slenda delivered a swift kick to the thief's side and reminded San not to listen to our captive. The creeper girl shrugged it off, her body falling limp and heavy on the thief once more. As feeling returned to my legs, I stood and stretched, craning my neck into the sandstone doorway. There was light on the other side, and I could see the edge of a chest. VF uttered muffled protests, but with our phantom arms wrestling in the sand, he couldn't stop me from entering his sanctum.

I stepped out of a raucous hostage situation and into a quiet study. The room was made of sandstone blocks as well, but had walls checkered with orange wool and decorated with frames. Each frame held a small item or tool, most of which were completely alien to our world. A collection of stolen mods. At the end of the room was a command block with a lever atop it, and behind it a ladder that was enveloped in the orange light of the afternoon above. But something else caught my eye.

On a nearby table was another strange, likely modded, device; a box-shaped contraption with a glass lens on the front and a lamp on top. Near it was a frame, likely where VF was about to store it, and a pile of pictures printed on clean white paper. They were clear as if you had seen them with your own eyes, but didn't seem painted or made by hand in any way. The picture on the top of the pile interested me the most… Because Slenda and Roxxie were both in it. With two others.

"Aren't these weird?" Slenda asked, pulling one off the wall. A few were pinned to the wall with swords and daggers, most depicting interesting locations like ruins or other players' creations. I tapped my finger against the one with Slenda and Roxxie and her eyes drifted to it, resting on it for a few moments before exploding open. She clawed the photo from the desk, holding it close to her face.

"How did… He get this picture?" She searched the desk for more pictures she recognized, seemingly finding several, her heart practically jumping through her sweater. She lifted up the boxy device likely responsible for the images, turning it over in her hands, "And Penelope's camera!"

The sound of dragging cloth came from the hall as San stepped in, holding VF by his collar. Apparently San had gotten bored of holding him while we advanced the plot. She didn't have to do much work to hold him though. No wispy hand extended from his cloak and the shine in his golden eyes was replaced by a half-lidded malaise as he waited for his bad day to end. He looked completely defeated.

"Please don't be so rough… I'm not wearing any armor, so my health is pretty-"

He looked up at Slenda, then the camera in her hands. His golden eye shined as his face contorted under his mask. I was expecting a yell, a scream, but he only spoke in his same frail voice. "H- Hey! P- Please put that back where you found it..! It's mine."

Slenda scowled at him, wrapping the device tightly in her arms. He tried to get to his feet and jump towards her but San knocked him onto the sandstone floor and promptly sat on him. A dry gust of air was shoved from his lungs, his arms falling flat on the floor. I knew how much she weighed… He wasn't getting up anytime soon.

"You stole this from my friend, I'm taking it back." Slenda growled, cramming the camera into her inventory.

"That's fair…" The thief sighed into the stone. Honestly, I felt kinda bad for him. I stepped forward, hands on my hips. "Come on, dude," I urged, "You're a desert thief! You say something cooler than that!"

"G- Give that back… Darn it!" He cursed quietly. San looked at me, an uneasy smile on her face. She moved off of him slightly, now just holding him down with her arm. "I'll settle for split custody… I follow you guys to Giant's Way, we trade it back and forth. I just like it 'cause it looks cool…"

Slenda stepped forward, a suspicious twitch in her eye, "How did you know we were going to Giant's Way?" She questioned.

"I was there in the bar." Phantom leered back at her, "How do you think I was able to set up this trap? I mean, if you guys wandered a different direction I'd be-"

San's eyes lit up, her hand leaving his back entirely. It was strange but, rather than terrified or bemused of the masked dork, I was honestly impressed. I mean, of his trap making abilities of course, not of his combat skills, theatrics, or social skills or… Well you get the idea.

I let out a "Wow" without even thinking. Slenda leered at me.

"You built this all overnight?!" San gleamed. Slenda's face remained stone, "That's incredible! You should join our crew! We're gonna have to fight this really powerful modder who beat up my girlfriend and got her kicked out of our server. You even know the area so you'd be great for the job!"

"Really?" VF asked, his voice breathless but filled with enthusiasm.

"No." Slenda countered, squinting at the pair, "I know Roxxane probably just seems like a monster to you... Or maybe even less... But she's my friend," Slenda gazed into the photo, scanning the image, "And we're going to try diplomacy first. I don't intend on dropping her down some sandy death pit… Or blowing her up. And I doubly don't intend on taking someone who just tried to leave us for dead along for the ride."

San looked up at her cuddle buddy with puppy dog eyes. The soft eyes behind Slenda's cracked lenses faltered for a moment, but as her fingers traced the photo her eyes once again became cold, hard pearls. She put the picture in the neck of her sweater, depositing it in her inventory. I put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched at first, glaring at me, but her eyes quickly softened. Crouching next to VF, I took a deep breath.

"Do you guys actually want to take me along?" VF asked, his voice pricked with genuine excitement, but dripping with anxiety. I looked at Slenda, who squinted at me. I knew it looked bad, but San was right… At least partially.

"It'd be kinda hard to take you on considering only one of our members actually trusts you..." I sighed, scratching my head, "But I'd be lying if I said you wouldn't be useful."

Even if he couldn't be an ally, he could be our guide. Slenda scoffed, her feet scratching the sandstone. I didn't look at her. "She won't let us bring you along, but do you have any information that could help us? Or anything we can use to our advantage? I'd appreciate it at the very least."

The thief brought himself to his knees, dusting the sand off his pants and coat.

"I have friends in the next server, I could let them know you're coming and they could help you out. Give you supplies or help you if things get ugly."

I nodded, clapping a hand against the thief's back. A cloud of sand sprayed from his mask. He groaned, but continued. His tone was bright, he sounded excited to help out even if he was more of a hostage than anything.

"There's also a pool of lava beneath Giant's Way. A huge one. So try to avoid that… And um, there's a shrine to Herobrine in the center. I know some modders believe in that stuff, so she might be there. It's in the middle of the big temple part. Can't miss it." A breath left the thief as his chest came against the tops of his legs, his body curling up. _At least we don't have to restrain him._ It looked like we'd be able to walk out of here without much problem.

I looked at Slenda, thinking about the pictures she so quickly sealed away. The people she was hiding. There was a man and a woman, both around her age, though the man stood behind them all. He had a powerful air about them. Slenda and the others were all smiling, holding each other _. It looks like one of the few happy memories Slenda has. How come she's hiding it from us?_ I didn't want our group to have any more secrets, not after the whole San incident, but now didn't seem like the time to ask. I rose to my feet, a hand on my hip. "Sorry for making this brief VF, but it looks like we're gonna have to go. Can't keep Roxxie waiting."

"O- Okay..." He sighed, "I'm gonna take a nap." Too bad he wasn't coming with us. Honestly, looking at his beat-up form curled up on the sandstone floor, hearing his tired voice croak in his chest, I couldn't relate to anyone more. Just another dork wearing a coat too big in the heat, beat up and given up on looking cool. _Oh well…_ I thought, _Maybe next time, when we meet outside of a trap. Maybe we'll even get along._

"Well enjoy your nap my dude!" San grinned, "We'll be seeing you!" She delivered a hearty pat to the thief's back, which apparently took the last of his health.

With a guttural _oof_ , **VillainFan42** vanished, leaving only a cloud of smoke and some scattered belongings. The three of us looked at each other for a moment, each face as baffled as the last. San pulled her lips between her teeth. I couldn't tell if she was cringing in guilt or trying to hold back a laugh. After a few seconds, her hands clapped together. She pointed them towards the ladder

"So uh, Giant's Way then?" she asked the two of us. We nodded. "Giant's Way."


	8. Chapter 8: A Server Filled with Dicks

As the lush green line of the jungle rose above the horizon, its pale, browning face pointed towards the desert, so did the sandy beige of the desert rise to a point, like a tab of sandstone had been pulled upward through the silt. A pyramid, a fortress of sandy brick wrapped in vine, rose high above the distant green. Obelisks of sandstone rose around it, nearly meeting its height, circling around the structure and reaching out in two parallel lines, extending it, creating a path that would be clear even to giants hundreds of times our size.

"So this is Giant's Way," San mused, swiveling her body as if she was trying to trace the tips of every pillar with her eyes in a private game of connect-the-dots, "Bit trashy, dontcha think?"

Imposing as it was, the fortress pyramid poured with smoke, and was pitted with innumerable holes and craters, as if it was the sole participant in a titanic firefight. Great pillars that once stood in perfect symmetry fell smoking, half buried in the sand. Grand heaps of the desert sand seemed to be missing, their pits lined with sprays of smoking glass, of which spikes seemed to tip the distant hills. Around the base of the pyramid and sloping up its pillars in an eerie fashion were frozen splashes of clear blocks, like icicles hundreds of blocks long, pointing in every direction. Even the pyramid's tip was broken, the crater nearest the top jagged, its tips pointing towards the western sky like a slumping crown.

Looking around, I realized that this behemoth creation, one that was described as a hub for PvP and other player interactions, was completely devoid of players. The desert suddenly seemed to feel very cold.

"This is horrible," Slenda's voice came from behind me, "But… There's no way Roxxie could have done all of this, is there?"

I shot a worried look back at her, her heart sinking in her eyes as I spoke, "I don't think it could've been anyone else."

San inhaled sharply, her eyes lowered at the magnificent ruin, "Gee I sure hope it was Roxxie! It'd suck if this is how it looked all the time."

"And what would you do if this area was in working order?" Slenda asked, a sly smile on her face as she spoke, "Take the tour? Peruse the local shops?"

The creeper squinted at Slenda for a second before folding her arms smugly behind, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with wanting to wreck every beautiful thing I see."

"Are you saying you'd wreck me?" Slenda snickered, feeling she'd final caught San in her logic.

San kissed her forehead, marching ahead of us. "What about last Thursday? Pretty sure I wrecked you then."

You could swear Slenda's face in that moment had been replaced by a block of pink wool.

I failed to stifle a laugh, my lip sputtering as I caught my mouth. She only grew pinker. Slenda stumbled for a few moments, fishing for a response, her mouth moving without her brain to keep it in check.

"Sorry Slenda, she got you," I admitted shrugging, "Besides, I'm pretty sure half of Weebtown heard you guys."

And then pink became red.

Slenda continued to stutter, becoming more and more like a redstone torch as we moved forward, San taking point, tromping up a nearby dune. She seemed incredibly adept, climbing the shifty sand beneath her boots with only a few swift footfalls. More like some kind of sand wolf than a human. I almost thought she would bark to signal us once she reached the top, but instead, she peeked her head out from the summit, looking down on us with wide eyes.

"Guys, you have to come up here."

Echoes of pain from days of walking began creeping through our legs, pricking our feet as we huffed up the hill. San waited impatiently at the top, berating our speed, acting as if it was normal to bound around like an ocelot.

When we reached the top, the sandy ruin and the jungle backdrop behind it splayed out before us, unfolding like a picture book. The clear pillars were more clear than before, the transparent waves and spikes that decorated the castles growing in our eyes, demanding our attention.

"There's so much… But it's glass, right?" San puzzled, looking out over the marred landscape.

"What do you mean?" I asked. I thought it was glass as well, but all of the glass seemed to pool or splash in craters buried in the ground, not stand in spires. These fogged, dripped. They looked like… "Ice?"

Slenda nodded, her eyes drifting uneasily across the landscape. "It might be… But hopefully you're not right."

"Why?" San asked, tilting her head.

"Because that means there's two griefers here."

San dropped into a crouched position, a very San-like grin on her face as she rubbed her hands together. Slenda clutched at the collar of her hoodie, her breaths shallow. Not much had changed; we were still in impossible danger and San was the only one excited, but now there was another modder. Another variable. There was a chance Slenda could talk down Roxxie, but what about this other modder? And worse, what if Roxxie was working with them?

Rocks clapped together, making a sound that echoed quietly through the valley. It was a small sound, negligible at first, barely even pulling San and Slenda's eyes… But I looked towards it.

Atop the crumbling stone of the monolith, whose sides cracked and came to points like a sunken crown, cloaked in the smoke she'd created. There she was. A stark black silhouette broken by two burning eyes, holes that pulled you into the deepest maw of the Nether. Staring right into us. Silent. Judging. I flapped a hand frantically towards Slenda, my feet refusing to move from their place, her eyes cracking wide as the figure came into view.

The silhouette broke again, the shadow below the eyes split by a cresting smile whose flames licked the sides of her face, curling into the air around her.

"Oh yeah, here we go!" San sprung forward, eyes like blue lightning, but was yanked backwards by a purple-clad arm, disappearing behind me. My eyes darted from her, back to Roxxie. The mouth was growing, the shadows of her form slowly devoured by the heat, conquered by flame as her physical body seemed to disappear before my eyes.

Popping sounds emanated from behind me as Slenda hollowed out the hilltop, the admin cursing as she yanked me downwards by the collar, my body landing with a thump in the pit.

She wrapped four stacks of sand blocks in her arms, pulling her sleeves over her hands as she crushed them into a single block of sandstone, all of which she hastily placed to cover the open ceiling.

"Come on Slenda, let me a-!" Slenda cupped a hand over San's mouth, pulling her against the wall where I was. She put a finger to her lips, dark eyes impounding her with silence. San nodded. I brought myself slowly to one knee, readying my mod, the phantom hands, which came around the fronts of my fists like a pair of misty claws.

Then, for the longest time, there was only quiet. Nothing but the sound of our own breathing. It was the kind of quiet that echoed in your eardrums, whose vibrations made you sick. That drove you desperately to speak, even though you knew that would bring something much, much worse.

Tense muscles began to slowly unravel, loosening at the absence of her presence. The absence of anything. I brought myself to a standing position, looking up at the sandy darkness.

"Maybe she didn't see us…?"

Slenda moved to speak, but suddenly froze, staring up at the stone ceiling.

Footsteps. Only a block above our heads. Slow. Measured.

A finger came to Slenda's lips, San and I nodding as we all sat in suspense, the sound echoing in our ears. Taps, quiet to our ears but echoing louder as they entered our minds, ricocheting like loosed bullets. They moved in circles above, meandering, then sloping down the wall at our side. Even muffled by the sand they came through clearly. As if she was standing in front of us.

Slenda reached into her collar, hands slow, fingers moving carefully like the legs of a prowling spider, as she pulled out a stone shovel. San looked at it dutifully, expectantly. It was almost as if she found it assuring. The empty pit in my chest only seemed to grow, my heart failing me as I realized what she was planning. She was going to dig an escape route.

 _"Are you crazy?"_ I hissed, biting on the whisper, clenching it between my teeth as if it would keep Roxxie from hearing it, _"She's going to hear us!"_

 _"She's going to hear you! But this is our only chance!"_ Slenda spat back, her normal confidence shaken from her voice, leaving it naked like a dying tree. She drove the shovel downwards, scraping away a sand block of the floor.

 _Pop_

As the miniature block flew over her shoulder, a distinct popping sound filled the cold, dry air of the chamber, even louder than Roxxie's footsteps. Footsteps that had suddenly gone quiet.

 _Pop. Pop. Pop._

I threw my hands downwards in a motion of haste, eyes darting between the spade and the sandy wall where Roxxie's footsteps had once sounded. _Go go go!_ Slenda popped out another block, and another, the sounds of her digging pounding in my ears as if I was the one she was striking. My head filled with visions of Roxxie knocking away the face of our makeshift hideout, reducing the wall to burning shards of glass as she reached in with a flaming hand. She would make us suffer before she killed us. The ones who laid all her plans to waste, who took any control she had on the world away from her.

San looked at the hole where Slenda descended, her dutiful expression sagging. I gave her a questioning look, and was met by her familiar pout. "I thought we were gonna use the shovel on Roxxie."

Slenda motioned for us to join her in the hole, and San immediately hopped downwards, crashing to the bottom next to Slenda and nearly impaling herself on the shovel. I stared down into the pit, then looked at the four walls around me. She still hadn't attacked. Maybe it was safe here. Safer than digging down at least. _"Are you sure?"_ I whispered, leaning over the edge. Slenda stared at me impatiently, "YES I'm sure," driving her shovel into the sand at their feet.

 _Pop._

The floor fell out beneath them as the sand broke, the miniature block falling into the darkness of an underground reservoir below. _The exact reason you never dig down._ As they fell into the dark with the block, the sand around them started to give way, as if the laws of physics had suddenly remembered to kick in. A wave of movement shot up the sandy walls of the pit, the ground, the walls, everything suddenly dropping around us. My feet failed to keep me upright as I kicked up troughs of sand. I lost my balance and fell backwards down the hole, the three of us landing in a pile at the bottom as stacks of sand fell around and on top of us.

I felt myself begin to suffocate as a block of sand crashed against my back, sand spilling around and in front of me, clouding my vision and filling my lungs. I could almost see my own meter of life slowly ticking downwards as I struggled against the blocks and blocks of homicidal soil.

When I finally broke the sand, I found myself alone in a pit of darkness, my chest meeting the new floor of our chamber. A chamber that had gone from being a cramped room at the top of a long pit to a wide vertical shaft, like a quarry. Relief began to set in as air returned to my lungs, a primal feeling that quickly faded.

"San? Slenda?"

My mind that had been dominated by survival suddenly shifted to concern. Roxxie was gone from my thoughts entirely, and I began crying out for them, "SAN! SLENDA!" pawing at the sand foolishly, breaking sand blocks at a golem's pace. One by one they broke, revealing nothing but sand. Sand. More sand.

A sand block broke, revealing a stone shovel that quickly gravitated to me, attaching itself to my hands. Slenda's shovel. I started digging through the sand. It was faster than before, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't going to save them.

Taking a deep breath, I plunged into the sand below. Suffocation damage set in quickly, my ribs crushed against my chest like I was being crushed by a giant, my muscles aching as I pressed forward, digging deeper. An arm brushed against mine, and I cried out. Nearly swallowing a block of sand, I managed to take a hold of someone, pushing them upwards towards the surface. I got them just far enough for them to break the sand, to breathe, and began looking for the other. Eyes opened to only black, so I didn't open them. Mouth opened to only sand, so I didn't open it. Just as I felt the bones of my chest began to crack and feel the pressure of the sand truly set in, I felt a leg brush against mine. Then an arm. Bony hands grabbed hold of my ankle and began pulling themselves up through the sand, followed by arms, then a body that pushed against mine. I dragged us towards the surface, moving my arms as if I was swimming upward. Second after second my strength was vanishing, but the other body held me up, kept me going. The hand from before, solid, strong, gripped mine and began pulling the two of us upward, my head breaking the sand, greeted by San's pale, sweating face. "Cyrus!"

She pulled me up the rest of the way, and I grabbed Slenda by her waist and pushed her up the remaining distance, her head breaking the sand, followed by her slender shoulders. Joining us in the shaft. We all sat, clothes spilling with pixels of sand, cluttered with miniature blocks, gasping in the dark. None of us were sent back to spawn, wherever that was. It must have been at the Sandy Speakeasy, but I couldn't tell in that moment. Whether it was a spawn a few days walk away or just a chunk away, I felt relieved that I was still rooted to the ground. _This_ ground, with San and Slenda on either side. We survived.

The roof far above us was quiet, but Slenda still placed a few blocks of wood some distance above our heads. It wouldn't be convincing to anyone digging from above, much less a protection from Roxxie, but it was what she could muster. San broke a block in the floor, an action which nearly gave the both of us crash, and replaced it with a block of netherrack, lighting it some flint and steel she had in her inventory. It almost felt like a campfire.

I was going to make a comment about the fall, about digging down, but after spitting up a miniature block of sand, I realized it would be in bad taste.

Slenda exhaled long and hard, a cloud of dusty beige clotting the air in front of her. San coughed, spitting out some sand in a long strand of saliva that she dropped between her splayed legs. "Crap. I Hate this stuff," She looked at me, cracking a smile, "It gets everywhere, doesn't even taste that good! This is why I didn't stay in this stupid desert."

Her comment surprised me, as it honestly wouldn't have surprised me if San spent a large portion of her life eating sand. I choked up a small cloud, giving her a broken chuckle, "You don't like it? It's just like you. It's dangerous to your heath, gets everywhere it shouldn't…"

Slenda opened the end of her pantleg, an entire stack spilling out onto the floor.

"Ugh, Notch, it's even in my underwear."

San lurched forward in what would have been a splitting fit of laughter, but instead began hacking on sand, spitting out a saliva-colored block into the fire. "Yep, that's… That's me."

Slenda reached into her sweater and pulled out a bottle of potion, handing it to San. She pulled out two more similar bottles, handing one to me and removing the cork of the other, throwing it back. "Health restoration," she grunted, wiping her face with a sand-stained sleeve, "Drink up, Dusty gave us plenty."

I drank mine and San chugged hers, shaking the dizziness from her head. The potion worked its way through my system, tendrils of energy grasping the broken parts of me and binding them back together as its warmth filled my chest. I watched as Slenda uncorked another bottle, taking a sip from it as she found another to give to San. Dusty had given us plenty, but we didn't have a whole warehouse of the things either.

"Maybe we should save some for tomorrow…" I said, letting out a small cough. My broken ribs had realigned, but my body was still stiff, and I still felt beaten. But I could still remember the pain I held in my bones when I fought Roxxie. And that was so much worse. We needed to keep what we could for the fight.

Slenda didn't look at me, staring at a place on the floor, rapping her fingers against her leg. San gulped down another bottle, tossing the empty glass next to her and reclining into the corner of the sandy pit. "Why's that?" She asked, "We're gonna beat the tar out of Roxxie. Heck, she'll probably need them more than us!"

Again, Slenda pretended not to hear her.

Though San tried further to hype us up, the three of us fell quickly into a quiet malaise, our silence dominated by the crackling of the flame. None of us fought it however. Once it came, we welcomed it. A moment of breath, of quiet not broken by probing footsteps. Just peace. Slenda looked through items in her sweater and her pockets, checking them. Taking inventory. San began to doze, slumping in her corner, her baggy hoody forming a natural pillow as her body craned.

There was warmth in that small room not brought by the fire. Something about the two of them, the dutiful and the ditz, which made me feel at home. Like I was part of some crazy family. A family about to charge into war.

I pulled my knees close, smiling at Slenda's small form from across the fire, curly streams of hair splashing around her shoulders and broken glasses winking the light of the fire. I was amazed she managed to keep them on during the whole ordeal. There was a sense that I was safe with her, just as San was. The way she looked so assuredly through her inventory, the way she seemed to be formulating a plan at all times. It reminded me of how I felt around Bernadette... Before everything fell apart.

She pulled out the photograph, the one we'd taken from the phantom thief. Her eyes fixed on it, mind seeming to drift for the first time.

Something began to tug at the back of my mind, an itching, nagging feeling that I wanted to refuse. My eyes attached to the photograph in Slenda's hand. My twisted stomach unraveled as my lips worked to motion.

"That's the picture VF had, right? Can I see it?"

Slenda recoiled, pulling the photograph behind her leg, shooting me a suspicious look.

"Why?" She snapped, her tone sharp but not unfamiliar. I put up my palms, silently submitting. Her expression softened for a moment.

"Can I please see it?" I asked again. I would have told her why but, I still wasn't sure if it was Bernadette I saw in the image before. Or if Slenda somehow knew her. Breath hissed through Slenda's teeth and she held up the image, her gaze impatient, her arm barely extended. I had to lean forward and squint to see it, but sure enough, I recognized her. Among Slenda, Roxxie, and the others, there she was. My girlfriend. The only person in Vanillakings I wanted to come back to. The reason I was stranded in single player.

"So... You guys do know Bernadette."

The sides of the photo bunched inwards as Slenda's hand clenched around it, fastening suddenly to her chest. Her mouth formed in a sorry expression somewhere between guilt and shock, her eyes turned inwards. I could tell they were closer than her and I were. Infinitely so. But I still didn't know how. A smile crept out from somewhere afar. Like a hook on a distant line just managed to grab the corner of her mouth, "We were sisters. Her, Roxxie, and me. We spawned together."

Silence took the room again, but only for a moment. Before I could catch myself, I let out a hoarse chuckle. I was probably just as shocked if anybody, if not more, but there was something so impossibly amazingly coincidental about the whole thing I couldn't help but laugh.

"Guess I dated your sister then." I smiled, San's eyes flashing with awareness as she sobered from her sleepiness. "No way!" Slenda sat frozen, her mouth hanging open slightly, her eyes like cold purple stones. I hadn't seen them like that since I first entered Weebtown.

"So we're all related then! If I'm dating Slenda you're like, my brother in law or something! Sick!" San beamed, her words burning my chest, stinging Slenda's eyes. She removed her glasses, wiping the sand from them, then wiping her face. Or, maybe it wasn't the sand.

"How's she doing." Slenda spoke coldly.

"She's one of the most popular builders in our server… And got elected operator around the time I left. We were dating but… I guess I wouldn't consider us as being together anymore."

Slenda's eyebrows bounced for a moment, her expression smearing, her gnarled teeth flashing from inside her mouth. "Sorry San, like he said, he's not dating her anymore. So no. We're not 'related.' And I said we _were_ sisters. I'd hardly consider her that after everything that's happened."

A sharp breath parted San's lips like her body was trying to reject the thought. Trying to pull us back together. But she seemed to know what Slenda was talking about all too well. For some reason however, Slenda's coldness didn't drive me away. It only made me more curious.

"What in the Nether did she to do you?" I questioned. Bernadette had done a lot of things I didn't like, but nothing worth disowning her.

"She abandoned us," Slenda spat, "Plain and simple."

"I mean, not _that_ simple." San interjected, face popped in her palms like a student. Slenda scowled at her for a few moments before acquiescing.

"Maybe it wasn't…"

Slenda stared at the photo, San pouted. Once more, the floor had been given to the flame. Crackle, crackle. She looked at me, staring into my eyes. Through them. Scanning for something she couldn't see on the surface.

A deep breath, in, out. "Okay,"

San and I looked to Slenda, not shocked, but definitely surprised. Slenda was so abrasive, so quick to hide when she needed to be. But now she was suddenly breaking out, telling us what we wanted to know. Questions seeding my thoughts were quickly uprooted however, as she began to speak.

"When I spawned in Goldenworks, I was all alone at first. It's a server filled with creative players, people who can fly and build endlessly, creating matter from nothing. The moment you spawn, your vision is filled with all of these towering structures, some floating in the sky, all awash with a rainbow of colors, all with people flying between them like birds. It was overwhelming, and I was terrified." She chuckled to herself, then began to speak again.

"Bernadette, and this other girl, Penelope, were in the same situation. All lost, all spawning the same day, wandering around this giant city. Bernadette was the most assertive out of all of us, and tried to ask people questions while Penelope cried, and I looked around. I was too nervous to talk to anyone. Then we found Roxxie."

"She spawned before you?" I asked. It surprised me that the more level-headed out of the two of them was the younger sibling. "Not by much," Slenda responded, "But she was the first one who was willing to tell us about the server. She took us on a tour, told us about the rules of the server, and whenever we had questions we would always look for her and she would drop whatever she was doing to help us. Not that she had a big role in the server either. When we found her, she'd usually be wandering around, trying to talk to people that always ignored her. At some point, we just all began moving as a group. Doing the same stuff, talking only to each other. We were our own little unit."

I smiled, imagining Bernadette and the others living together, having a life aside from fleeing from server to server, causing unwanted destruction. San wore a paper-thin grin, pulled a little too tight at one side. She'd heard this story before, and she was trying to savor this moment, nodding silently as Slenda repeated the story to her. It had to be all downhill after this.

"Why did you guys leave?"

"Because the people running the server were jerks! At first we thought that we just didn't know how to 'turn on' creative, like we were doing something wrong. But later it turned out that creative mode was restricted to certain players. And those players were all friends of the admin. They had a process where you could sign up for creative, or request it from the admins, but it always went nowhere. They didn't even let you break blocks or build in most areas unless you were a creative player, so we just had to sit ad twiddle our thumbs like a bunch of children! Penelope was the only one to get in, and that was just because she was cute, and she had a mod."

 _The camera._ I thought, looking at the picture. It must have been hers.

"We kept trying for years, but eventually we just got fed up with wasting our time there. We made a plan to leave the server, and send a message to the admins up top while we were at it…" Slenda pulled in, gripping her legs, her eyes slightly sullen. The way they looked back in Weebtown, "Not that I'd… Encourage vandalizing a server you disagree with the rules of…"

"Be gay do crime!" San shouted, raising her arms above her head. Slenda patted her hair, kissing her forehead. As she settled back into her seat, she seemed as if she was getting ready to speak again, but was interrupted by a laugh that seemed to come from nowhere. The laugh popped her lips open, parting her sagging frown into an open-mouthed smile.

I couldn't help but chuckle myself. Before I could ask what she was laughing about, she quickly filled us in, and nearly sent me flopping onto the floor,

"We decided that, that night, we would fill the server with giant, flaming dicks."

San exploded into uproarious laughter, doubling over and falling over the pile of sand at her side, slapping it as she tried to keep herself upright. From her face you could tell that she saw it coming, and there was something familiar in her smile, like she'd ask Slenda to tell this story many, many times.

"Are you kidding me?!" I questioned, coughing up sand as a laugh came pushing and shoving from the crowded cavity of my chest, "No!" Slenda replied, still laughing herself, incredulous of her own story, "I don't really think about how silly it was sometimes… It's so hard to believe it was only a five years ago. Though, I guess that doesn't mean much when there's only ten minutes in a day, does it?"

"You mean you guys really went through with it?" I asked. Slenda nodded in response. I sat, dumfounded.

The fire crackled for a few seconds, dominating the conversation once more. San was still sprawled over her sandy pile, but she was quiet.

"So we initiated it, the dick plan. Roxxie would get a mod that we could use to cause a bunch of chaos, and I'd build as quickly as I could and vandalize the main living areas while Bernie built us a charged mine cart track for a quick getaway. For the most part, it went pretty well. Roxxie got a cool fire mod, so while I was knocking out windows and breaking down walls to make these short phalluses out of wood on one side of the server, she was on the other side making towering dongs out of magma. It was honestly pretty beautiful!" Slenda scratched at her shoulders, running her hands up and down them. Shivering, "So then we went to leave…"

I could guess what happened. "And Bernadette ran out on you, right?" I asked, interrupting her. "Not quite…" Slenda responded, "She reported us."

San went to mutter something in protest, but ended up coughing up another block of dust.

"We got to the meeting place, and there she was, standing next to Penelope and the server admin. He used his mod, this giant purple energy hand, kinda reminded me of the aura you see coming out from an enderman, and he smacked us around, beating us against the nearby walls and ground, and dropping one of the structures I'd built on top of me before finally tossing us—literally!—out of the server's boundaries. When we tried to get back in, we found that the outside wall repelled us. That there was suddenly this invisible wall that prevented us from getting in. We were beaten, and banned."

Slenda's expression changed suddenly, her eyes latching onto me. "So sorry if Bernadette makes me a little bitter, she just betrayed me and stood by while me and my only friend got the crap beaten out of us… And apparently she didn't even do it out of loyalty to the server…"

Crackle. Crackle.

"The fact that after doing that, she went to Vanillakings and played the goody two-shoes routine all over again… I can't fathom how she became like this. I mean, me and Roxxie are…!"

Slenda pursed her lips.

Crackle. Crackle.

Once more, the fire took the stage. Not quieting the room, but filling it with short snaps, crackling bursts of energy that I flinched at, but tried to ignore. Bernadette was my life up until just a month ago, the only person I could rely on. And suddenly there were so many thoughts coming to challenge that. So many biting words that summoned themselves to my thoughts. _But it was their fault for vandalizing the server,_ I posited, challenging myself, _Just like it was our fault for getting banned._

But what if it wasn't?

"I guess we have something in common," I grunted, propping my arm on a straightened leg, "Because she's the reason I got kicked out of my server, too."

The strained hold on Slenda's expression started to break, replaced by a softened expression of pity. I knew that wouldn't last long, however.

"You see… There was a modder in the server. People called him a couple names; Big Daddy, Ishmael, what have you, but nobody knew his username. Mods were banned, and he should have been kicked out immediately, but no one could learn the guy's username. Not even the admins. He was the kind of man who tore through walls instead of finding a door. The kind who stole blocks from structures just to see how they'd fall. Who took loot from every dungeon raid the server conducted. But when you have a drill for an arm, I guess you can do that."

San seemed intensely curious, like an old woman bending over the counter begging for gossip, but Slenda only grew more uncomfortable. Even then, I continued, words pushing their way to the surface as if they were all suddenly coming up for air at once. Like they'd only now found out where they were supposed to be and were all rushing towards their destination. A month of silence, of keeping my story to myself, was suddenly ending. I wanted them to know about what brought me to Weebtown, the reason why we were all together. I wanted to feel connected to these two and not like we were three weirdly affectionate strangers on the worst road trip of our lives. They deserved to know who I am, and how much of an idiot I am. Maybe that's why Slenda was talking too. Because she felt the same.

"Bernadette was one of the more outspoken members of the server. She was always quick to jump down someone's throat if she thought they were wrong, and she was never ashamed about that. Maybe she was a bit of a narc, and was a little too quick to snitch on people, but she was always confident when she made an accusation. "If he's not my problem, he's just gonna be someone else's problem," She'd say, "So I'll make him my problem."'

Slenda stared at the fire, shaking her head. She muttered something about her that I tried to ignore.

"After so long seeing her throw herself at the guy, I talked to the shadier members of the server. The ones who dealt in modded items and griefed goods, and I found out how to get a mod. The next day, I stored all my stuff in a chest in my room and dove off the highest cliff I could find. And when I died…"

"You tried talking to him. To Herobrine." Slenda responded. I forgot that his name was common outside my server. The eyeless face in the void. "Yes."

"Notch…" Slenda grunted, sloping into her corner of the wall. I knew she didn't have a mod, but she seemed to know the process all too well. Like she'd heard Roxxie and Penelope describe it to her a hundred times. Though Slenda seemed to understand the process, San sat forward, arms propped on her legs, eager to hear more. As if I was telling her a bedtime story. I wondered if she even knew who Herobrine was.

"It kinda sounded like one of those urban legends where you talk to a bathroom mirror, y'know? Everyone goes through the void when you die, and we all see it for a few seconds before we respawn, but no one ever tries _talking to it._ That's what I was told to do though, I talked to the darkness and I asked it for a mod. I hung there for a few minutes, and the lasted longer than it usually did. The longer I looked at the black void, the more I thought I could see shapes. Objects. But they were black on black. Even the face in front of mine. As soon as I realized it was there, felt his breath on my face and his hands on my shoulders, his eyes flashed open. Two holes of pure white, voids that went on even farther than the one we were standing in, holes that…"

A droning, buzzing sound overpowered my voice, gurgling from the throat of a sleeping creeper girl. Slenda smiled at the sight of her, toppled on a block of sand, her hair messily tossed around her head, her legs sprawled. She reached out, petting her hair as she slept. The ex-admin looked back to me, the coldness returning to her face.

"You want me to stop, don't you?" I asked. She shook her head.

"So, that night, I told Bernadette what I did, and she was pissed. She starts screaming about how irresponsible and immoral what I did was, about the rules they had against modders would mean that I'd get banned as soon as anybody found out, that I was just as bad as this Ishmael guy!" A tightness in my gut told me to stop. But I continued, "She ran out, and I was left all alone…"

Slenda nodded. "I know the feeling…" She said under her breath before drawing herself in again, "Ugh, sorry. Go on."

I wiped something from my eye. Probably just sand.

"So then… Bernadette banned you?" Slenda asked, her voice strikingly neutral, "Typical." She muttered, wiping her face with her sleeve.

"No, actually," I corrected, "Actually, I managed to find the guy. It was the middle of the day and he was standing in the spawntown's main square on one of the fountains, spouting some garbage about taking over the server, becoming the new admin or something. I broke through the crowd, and I started wagging my finger at him. Telling him, that "This was the end of his reign of terror," and that he "Wasn't the only modder in the server anymore!" and he stepped down from the molding of the fountain, grabbed me by the throat, and bashed me over the head with his drill."

"You didn't fight back?!" Slenda snapped, taken aback, "Well…" I stammered, scratching my head, "I didn't exactly know how to use my mod."

Slenda slapped her palm against her face, shaking her head at me. I'm sure she muttered something about me under her breath, but I just tried to keep going. Not like my incompetence was news to her, anyway.

"He drops me onto the stone floor, bloody from head to toe, and puts a boot to my chest. The guy keeps his speech going, without missing a beat, but now standing on me rather than the fountain. I start staring at his drill, wishing that I could have it, that I could take make _that_ my mod. And then I started to feel something. Like heat was flowing from the place on my head where he hit me, down to my hands. I started telling my hands to change, kinda chanting in my head to make them change, to work like his mod. And almost like clay, my hands started shifting, spiraling upwards, hardening. I took one of my new drills and I swung at him, knocking him off balance and probably breaking one of his shins."

"Geez…" Slenda groaned, not seeming to want to go on. I apologized, wrapping up the end of my short, stupid story.

"He was incredibly strong, way stronger and faster than I could ever be, but my mod let me have two drills to his one. They let me block most of his hits, and, before I knew it, I had a clear opening and shoved a drill through the pair of oxygen tanks on his back, then, as he was fumbling trying to take them off, I put one through his head.

"He died, and the materials that he had, mostly decorations and random things he'd stolen from around town, gravitated to my pockets. I was now the modder, the griefer, standing in the middle of town, surrounded by a terrified crowd."

Slenda shuffled uncomfortably, pulling her hands into her sleeves and pulling them around her sleeves as she sat, making a small cocoon.

"After a few seconds, Bernadette and the server admin come out of the crowd. The old lady raises a finger, speaks my username, and demands me to leave the server. She didn't ban me, but she told me that Bernadette had reported me, and if I ever showed my face in the server again, that there would be no hesitation in removing me with force."

"So… She basically banned you?"

"Blacklisted I suppose… With a heavy helping of public shaming…" I took some grains of sand, tossing them into the fire. Testing it. Watching it flicker before jumping back to life, "I've been blaming myself for it ever since. I guess it was a pretty dumb thing to do."

A shoulder came up against mine. I looked to see Slenda, now sitting at my side. She put a hand on mine, looking up into my eyes. "Screw that. You did your best." She responded.

A tear rolled down my cheek, which she quickly dried with the sleeve of her sweater. Then more. Streams started coming out of my eyes, sticking to the hair at the sides of my face, my bangs. I wiped at my face, pulling out my scarf help dry my tears as they stumbled out, pushing and shoving to leap out into the world. The way Slenda was breathing, I figured she was crying too. Though, she sounded less like a doofus, in my opinion.

"We've talked about a lot tonight, haven't we?" Slenda chuckled, sniffling. I agreed.

"I dunno," She shrugged putting an arm around mine, "I just… I wanted you guys to know why I have faith in her… In Roxxie. She was the only one on my side for a while, before I met San. She deserves a chance."

Again, I agreed, coughing as I tried to get my own words out. I wasn't sure if it was appropriate, but I still had something to say.

"Roxxie's caused a lot of havoc, and we're not the only players in Weebtown whose lives she messed up. But everyone deserves a second chance. Even her," Slenda nodded eagerly, tears welling up again in her eyes as she moved forward to embrace me, to thank me. I wasn't finished.

"And even Bernadette."

Slenda froze, staring at me for a moment. Cold, judging. "You have a lot of nerve-"

I piped up, cutting her off, "But it's a double-standard, isn't it? To be so cold to Bernie because she wronged you, while expecting us to forgive Roxxie for what she did to us, and the server? Don't you see how that's hypocritical?"

She cast her gaze to the side, her eyes unable to stay on me. Her face painted with a kind of anger I hadn't seen before.

"Is that why you told us your story?" She asked, an accusing eye cast to the wall.

"No." I replied simply, "I thought we should try getting closer to each other… You guys are the only friends I have after all. But I guess that's pretty sad isn't it?" I scratched a sandy palm across my face, trying to wipe the wetness from my eye, only to replace it with dust.

Slenda shook her head, trying to hold in a burgeoning snicker, "Just a bit. Though, after everything that's happened, the same could be said for San and I."

"We're a crappy little family, aren't we?" I said, still in disbelief at myself. I didn't even realized I'd used the word "family" until I saw Slenda's face shift, crinkling into a bewildered smile. Her arms retracted into her sleeves, which she then used to wipe her face. "Yeah, real crappy…"

The crackling began to take the room once more, our mouths curled into low, straight curves, as if we were trying to muster the strength to lift the sullen corners of our lips. But we had to do it together. The crackling was bouncing, excitable. It was a sound springing in and out of life, not just cries of some desperate block of burning light, clinging to life.

"Maybe you're right, about Bernadette. Maybe if I see her again, I'll try to see her through your eyes… If I ever see her again."

"Then... No more hang-ups?" I asked, placing a hand on Slenda's. San put her hand in the middle of our circle, confidence like shining steel in her face, Slenda looked like she was about to start crying again, "So, you guys'll help me talk to Roxxie?"

I nodded. She wasn't just some griefer, like Ishmael. She was Slenda's big sister. At the very least, she deserved a chance of redemption. Just like we'd all gotten. No matter how stupid we've been.

San yawned, groaning back to life like a restarting engine. Her eyes flickered, winking away sleep and dust, glancing at us. She smiled, yawning again.

"Y'all are so boring… Are we gonna prep for tomorrow yet? I wanna start making a scenic pit of magma and cacti so we can-"

"San!" The ex-admin smiled uneasily, I gave San a look. San blushed, "Oh, yeah, i- if it comes to that." Slenda placed her palm on top of San's, squeezing it.

"Please, babe... Try not to… Do all of that."

"Unless we need it?"

"Unless we need it." Slenda acquiesced.

San looked at her, her eyelids falling softly, "I'll try, babe."

I put my hand on theirs, letting out a light breath. "So we're all ready then... For whatever comes our way."

"Ready." San nodded.

"Ready." Slenda sighed, her face brightening.

"I'm ready too." VF said from somewhere just of sight, his ghostly hand phasing through the pile, which immediately exploded outward, as Slenda recoiled back, leaping towards the far wall. She tumbled on the sand, kicking dusty pixels around the room as she scuttered backwards

"WH- WHAT THE NETHER?!"

A wall of sand broke in the wall, replaced by a torch, and beneath it was the phantom thief, his head shrunk shyly into his shoulders, staring up at us with puppy dog eyes. Well, eye.

San sat grinning the whole time, giggling to herself as if she knew it was coming, and as if she didn't jump herself. She leaned over so she could watch as Slenda climbed back up, extending her hand to lift her up the last bit of the way. VF whispered profuse apologies.

"That... Wasn't funny..." Slenda muttered, still shaking at the sudden appearance of the phantom thief.

"It kinda was," San admitted, Slenda leering at her before her expression broke and she gave San a punch in the arm. We turned to VF, who was nervously fidgeting with his mask.

I faked a cough. Which wasn't that hard, all things considered, "Did you uh... Come here to tell us something?"

The thief immediately straightened, pulling his hands behind his back, his shoulders shooting up. His phantom hand came from behind to straighten his hat as he spoke.

"Oh! Sorry, I just wanted to let you know I gathered those friends I told you about! There's, well, not a lot of them. But we can trust them!" VF announced, pulling out a map on which he highlighted a stone ridge, half covered in dried vines and jungle brush, "One of the players has a mod that will be able to keep her in place, and the other has a special long-range weapon. If she's too much for you guys, that is. Is that helpful? I hope it's helpful."

Slenda offered an uncomfortable smile to the thief, mentioning that we would try to negotiate first. "We'll give you a signal." She said reluctantly, thanking him. The phantom thief tipped his hat, readying a slick exit.

I wondered about his allies. They were just strangers, third-wheels. Players that had no feelings in the conflict, who had no idea who Roxxie and Slenda were, or why this was all happening. Although I guess you could still say the same about me just a day before.

I turned to the thief as he began to recede into the sandy doorway he'd carved with his mod, hesitating for a moment. He had nearly disappeared from sight when I finally spoke up.

"How did you find us?" I asked. VF shrugged.

"You guys were making so much noise, they can probably hear in the next server to be honest."

Slenda went pale.

The phantom thief disappeared into sand and darkness, leaving us dazed in silence, with just our thoughts.

"She could hear us." Slenda said under her breath, "This whole time. And she didn't kill us."

"Dang, she's a pretty bad griefer then." San commented, "Unless she's going for an attack while we're asleep, that's pretty lame.

Crackle.

"Maybe we shouldn't sleep." Slenda said, breaking the wooden roof above our heads, standing up straight in the shaft, "Maybe… We should be the ones to meet her."


	9. Chapter 9: Not Allowed to Die

The temple stood blanketed by a layer of night, pricked by the crackling glow of fires like a thousand burning eyes. My feet clapped loudly against the stone path, the sand giving way to rock and scattered grey at the obelisk's feet, the solid footholds a welcome escape from the shifting silt. Making our way across the sandy valley between us, it felt as if spirits walked among us, weaving in-between the structures, whispering.

Three flights of stairs ascended the pyramid on our side, and we began climbing, each to our own stair, alternating when we would reach a portion crumbled away, or a smoking crater in the path. A crater pushed me off of my path, then Slenda was pushed from hers, and soon we were all climbing the center stairway together, all of our eyes pulled to a single point. The monument's cracked summit.

Clumps of sandstone that seemed solid became loose underfoot, breaking away and tumbling down the rough slope behind us. The rough pixels tumbled down, cracking, shattering, dusting the hill below. The whispers of stone below felt as if they were ushering me upwards, pushing me further from the crumbing path behind us, though it only pushed me closer to the heart of the disintegrating crypt. Slenda must have seen the apprehension on my face because she put a hand on my shoulder, throwing me a bright, if equally worried, look.

"You think she'll be happy to see us?" I asked, casting my eyes towards the distant peak.

"Absolutely not." Slenda sighed, a strange brevity to her voice, "But… That doesn't mean she'll be entirely unreasonable."

San, who'd been lagging behind, tromped up the steps behind us, shoving her head between us, "Do you think she's gonna set one of us on fire?!" She asked, her voice filled with its always unfaltering light. You could swear she was about to board an amusement park ride.

Still, I cocked my head, considering her question. But as I went to speak, Slenda jumped in.

"Yeah, probably one of us." She spoke assuredly.

"Cyrus?" San asked.

Slenda shrugged, "Probably."

As sweat began to coat my face in a thin layer, we passed the halfway point of the stairwell, and soon we passed another large portion. As we neared the top, my body was almost completely sopped with perspiration, even with my pointless scarf stowed in my inventory. I would have removed my jacket, but I knew that wouldn't help. It wasn't the heat that was making me sweat. Besides, it helped complete my silhouette.

Though we had never discussed or decided on Roxxie's location, we all seemed to understand where it was. As we reached that point, the peak of the manmade mountain that was the pyramid's tip, an undeniable pressure seemed to flatten us. My center of gravity seemed to drop without my direction, my body bending, crouching as we neared the highest point of the colossus. I tried to hold myself higher, reasoning I was just tired from the climb. But I didn't want to reach the top.

I knew that we would try to reason with her, try to give her a second chance. She deserved it after all, we all did. But there was no guarantee she'd grant us the same courtesy. And practically no likelihood she'd do anything to preserve my life, especially given she'd only known me for a few weeks before her grand coup. I could only hope that her sparing us earlier was a sign of some kind of sympathy or sense of mercy that she would keep for us. For me.

And what about San? If Roxxie decided to lash out without thinking, just attacking us out of anger, would she be willing to kill San? Would she even realize it? I still didn't know why, but San couldn't respawn, and that made her life more of a priority than mine. I glanced over to her, catching sight of her dim-witted grin as she skipped up the steps, and I smiled. Maybe I could use a little blind optimism too.

At last, our feet began to trample the rubble at the entrance to the pyramid's tip. The wall on our side was all but demolished, making it feel as if we were entering the open fourth wall of a stage. And as we came across that front row, eyes nervously scanning the three remaining walls, we came all at once to the same sight. The same realization.

Roxxie stood in the room's center. Not hidden. Not scowling from above. Just sitting in the room's center, arms folded, eyes hanging on some uninteresting line at the corner of the room. It felt as if we'd walked into her home. As if we were disturbing the peace.

The three slanted walls came to a single hole at the highest point through which sunlight poured like the sand of an hourglass, illuminating Roxxie's back. Magma poured in curtains from openings in the ceiling, lighting the corners of the room with a deep, amber glow where the sunlight failed to shine. Where it pooled, it always broke into streams, sliding into the depths of the room, creating a moat of liquid fire deep in the floor below us. Roxxie's legs dangled off of the stone clicking playfully against it. The floor beneath her was raised in places, but seemed to create an image. A huge, square face with the eyes missing. It didn't match any of the other architecture.

San tugged Slenda's sleeve, who stood like a stone. Though, I wasn't sure if she was staying rigid for strength or from fear.

"Are those… Cracks?"

The griefer's jacket was replaced by a small black top, closer to a sports bra, her bottom covered by baggy black bottoms, torn in places. Her arms were bandaged heavily, like a fighters, but there was something moving at their edges. At the edges of all of her clothing like tiny spiders moving in slow motion. They were cracks.

They resembled the cracks that spread across blocks as they broke, and I blinked a few times, hoping that I was mistaken, but they remained. They seemed to drift like a layer of fog across the brown sea of her skin, disconnected from the surface in places. Red outlines flashed about them. Nothing, not even their shape, their color, their image, was stable.

It wasn't the skin that was cracked. It was her essence. Her concept. She was like a breaking block, suffering slowly under some unseen stress, moments away from disappearing. From being reduced to pixels. As she sat watching idly as a glowing orange heat ran in hidden rivers underneath her skin, defining the cracks, she hummed thoughtfully. The cracks winked us with strange red flashes. Her other hand glowed blue.

Breath rasped from Slenda as she took a step forward. One foot, then the other, then stopping. As if there was an invisible line she was drawing closer to, but could not cross. Roxxie cast an eye over her shoulder, embers spilling from its smoky corner. Just as fear gripped me totally, holding me in place, something cracked in her expression. The cold heat faded, replaced by a weary smile.

"You're finally back!" Roxxie breathed, rising up from her seat. She threw her legs over the pedestal, her body moving with a bouncing weight.

Her movement triggered something in me, instinct maybe. I stared forward, gilding my empty expression with steel. If she wanted to strike us down now, strike _me_ down, we were a calculated risk. A part of her plan. I clenched my hands into fists.

She crossed the space between us swelled as she filled the space, as if the air between us was speedily compressing. As she neared, I brought my arms in front of my face, a pair of phantom hands spiraling around them like gauntlets, San pulling twin blocks of TNT from her pockets, hoisting them both in the air ready to lob at the griefer. Neither of us were fast enough, Roxxie flying into Slenda with surprisingly human speed, the both of them swaying in embrace as Roxxie pressed her nose into the nape of Slenda's neck, whimpering like a child.

"I missed you so much, Slenda!" she wailed, squeezing her sister tight. Slenda hesitated for a moment, more out of confusion than anything, but then scooped up Roxxie in return. She pulled her close, the both of them affectionately nuzzling each other, emitting wordless sounds. I let my arms fall, perplexed at the scene. But relieved.

"It's only been a few days…" Slenda sighed, rocking her back and forth in her arms.

"It felt like months!" She moaned, squeezing Slenda tightly again.

I couldn't help but feel like the display was genuine. The way they'd been so close before, how mad Roxxie was when Slenda turned on her in Weebtown… They were still sisters. For a moment, I considered that I had set my expectations for her too low, that I was being too pessimistic about Roxxie. But something still tugged at the back of my mind. The destruction she'd caused, the way she looked at us from the pyramid's top before. What had she done between then and now, preparing for our arrival? And what about the ice modder?

Roxxie loosened her grip, looking at Slenda from arm's length. The griefer looked about Slenda's clothes, ripped and stained by sand. Something seemed to click, "The server members, they didn't throw you out, did they?"

Slenda nodded, her smile misshapen slightly by her discomfort. Roxxie let out an empathetic whimper, "I'm so sorry… They never deserved you." She sighed, squeezing her sister tightly. Something dimmed in Slenda's eyes.

"I've been running back to Weebtown ever since I respawned… I want to start over, to make things right between us. I didn't think about you, and how you'd feel about everything, and I shouldn't have done all of that. You didn't deserve to be thrown out."

"And what about the server members, the ones whose homes you destroyed?" Slenda asked coldly. Roxxie did not release her arms, but rearranged herself, shuffling uncomfortably, suddenly realizing she was the only one who was truly embracing as her sister was stiff as stone.

"You took the same thing away from me that you took from them, even if it could be rebuilt. A home. A safe space. A project they could always smile and look back on. But you feel sorry for me and not for them?"

The griefer exhaled, rolling her eyes.

"Well, yeah, but they're not the ones I care about. I want to make things up to _you,_ build a server with _you."_

The once open palms Slenda placed on her friend's back started to close, pulling to Slenda's sides. She retracted from the shell of Roxxie's embrace, which still hung in the air as if Slenda hadn't moved. Roxxie shivered.

"Roxxie… You can't just treat everyone like trash and act like I somehow validate you... You don't get to come back into my life that easily," Slenda began, breathless, "If you don't want to give a crap about other people, fine. But you're not doing it in my server. Not again."

The face behind Slenda's cracked lenses was hardened by twitching sternness, betraying her conviction. Flicks of light began trickling into the air around the griefer's face, both red and blue. Slenda tried to drive on, but Roxxie stomped a foot among a flurry of embers, halting her.

"What do they matter?" She asked, waving her arm towards San and I. Roxxie shook her head, upturning her hands in confusion, "San isn't my sister, YOU were, last time I checked! We're the ones who went out and tried to make a new server where we could be happy, WE'RE the ones that matter. They're not part of this discussion, crap, people like Cyrus and the other weebs are barely part of this whole story! Just side characters. It doesn't matter whether they live or die as long as we're happy."

I planted my feet, trying not to let the offence show on my face. In a way, it was funny. A few days ago I would have almost agreed with her, but considering everything I'd done for her sister, I found myself thinking that she should be thanking me.

Slenda shook her head, her face strained, eyes holding back what she would not be able to stop. Not because of what was being said, but what wasn't being said. The decision she would have to make. I let the ghostly matter of VF's mod crawl down my sleeves and wrap around my arms, sheathing my fingers like a clawed glove.

The two stared at each other for a few moments, Roxxie stomping in her frustration, her body and voice flailing, "Then, then I'll learn! But you have to take me back. Don't you?!" Tears began to break across her cheeks, steaming against her skin on one side, "You're taking me BACK!"

Though she wiped the heavy droplets from under her eyes, Slenda choked down her response, refusing to respond.

"ANSWER ME!"

Slenda only needed one thing from Roxxie to take her back; an acknowledgement that history would not repeat. That her dreams would not go up in flames again. That Roxxie cared about someone other than herself. But as we stood in a misshapen circle around the griefer, watching her reactions, seeing the flame lick at her arms, we knew that it wouldn't come.

The griefer muttered something under her breath, averting her gaze from her sister. Slenda prodded her, demanding to know what she said. Strands of flame began to loose from Roxxie's side, streaming through the cracks. As they grew, so did the cracks, as if the fire was crawling through them, widening them to enter the world.

It was then that I understood what the cracks were.

"You act like we didn't do the same thing to Goldenworks. Like a cleansing fire isn't our thing. What exactly happened to make you think you're better than me?"

"I don't think I'm better than you. I just think I deserve… Something _._ " Slenda responded coldly.

The tips of Roxxie's hair began to light, then burn, falling to ash like the tip of a dying cigarette, the flames crawling up her naked arm and her side, expanding the cracks as they went. On the blue side, there was no fire, only a billowing fog that spilled from the back of her hand, crawling upwards. Underneath, a transparent blue sheet coated her skin, broken by thin black cracks. Not blue fire, not steam. But ice. A mod in complete opposition to her own but sharing the same body. Weighing on the reality around her.

The two mods, the mutilated earth around the pyramid, the destruction she caused both to the land and herself… They were all stress she was putting on the world. And it wasn't going to hold for much longer.

Slenda struggled to keep her composure, staring at the face of her sibling, sharpened by ice and bent into ribbons of fire. I couldn't tell if she was hiding her terror or if she felt none at all.

"I thought you were going to try to mend things, but you're just trying to get me to apologize with a gun to my head! Bringing your girlfriend and your cronies to take me out, you're so full of crap!" Roxxie stepped forward again, the sand melting beneath one of her feet, ice spreading under the other. It made its way across the floor like it made its way across her skin, cracking the earth, spreading like a virus, "For Notch's sake, I thought you'd at least learn SOMETHING coming here. This world is made for us, Slenda! There are so many players just doing whatever and enjoying their lives and we've been stuck following stupid rules. And you sent a crew of weirdos after me."

"VF's friends?" I asked, a ghostly wind swirling under my coat. I felt a chill go through me, as if the mod was ready to lash out at her, to attack for the sake of its master, "What did you do to them!"

Roxxie looked back at me for the first time, her eye like a broken pond in the middle of a shelf of ice. "What did I do?" She asked, laughing, "Exactly what you think I did. Burned them. Same thing I did to the speakeasy."

My heart sank, feeling as if the world had suddenly dropped out from beneath me. The safety net shredded. I felt sick.

Slenda gasped, San's eyes shot wide, "YOU DID WHAT?!"

"I. Leveled. It." Roxxie said, bringing her gaze back to Slenda. Vanillakings. My respawn point was back in Vanillakings again, and there was no chance of that changing now. No beds nearby. None in my inventory. The fires seemed to grow, becoming brighter, blue flickers peeking through the cracks in her form. San was seething, doing everything she could to hold herself together. If it wasn't for what Slenda said last night, she would have torn her head off. Though I wasn't sure where Slenda stood anymore.

"While you guys were screwing around underground, I did some cleaning up. I took out the RPers you were sending after me and I destroyed the only rest area in the entire server… Now both of us will go back to Goldenworks if we die."

Flame roared, growing in intensity as she spoke, the cracks growing, stretching, spiraling around her limbs like tendrils of some hidden beast. They blinked crimson, bending the color around her edges like a photograph soaked in blood.

"I don't have any reason to respawn. You're the only thing I have left… So I'm going to crash. On my terms."

There was a sound like a latch clicking shut, coming from somewhere below us. The ice that spread across the floor had suddenly leaped up my legs, forming into a block that completely surrounded my lower body, locking me in place.

Before I could reach for the block, or try to break free, the frigid restraints lunged backwards, then shot into the air, closing around us as they formed giant claw-like hands that ensnared us. I struggled, trying to use my mod to fight back, but the thief's claws refused to come out. It was as if I didn't have it anymore.

"Roxxie, n- no, you can't!"

"Oh, I can," she breathed, throwing her arms up. Her ice cracked the walls, spreading out into the world beyond. The fire and ice that surrounded the temple, flowed within her, they were a part of her. Reality warped by her will, her body as the focal point. All she would have to do was pile on the elements until their weight ripped through the fabric of reality. Her only escape plan

The cracks crawled like gangly fingers, pulling at the air, expanding from her form. They became like branches, standing, twitching, arcing across the air as they changed from a break in her skin to a break in the air, in reality itself. The cracks radius of cracks extended towards Slenda, welcoming her, and she stumbled backwards in fear. She fell on her back, a crack attaching itself to her, becoming a crack across her leg.

San screamed, breaking through the ice with a block of TNT in had, whipping it around in an attempt to throw it. It was frozen to her palm.

"Urk!" She grunted, then began to shriek savagely, "Let us go so I can kill you, dangit!"

She snarled at me, her arm refrozen, her legs kicking about wildly within her constraints "DANGIT CYRUS, KICK HER BUTT!"

"HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT?!" I questioned, wriggling inside my frozen prison, "I NEED TO TOUCH HER MOD TO—"

I looked down at my body, completely covered in ice, my veins chilled with a destructive potential that I'd somehow failed to notice. I looked back up at San, who blinked once, then twice, staring dumfounded at me.

"D- Did you not…"

"I was distracted, okay!" I yelped, beginning to channel the ice into my arms, "Cut me some slack!"

I pushed out energy, mass, thinking that it would shoot form the icy claw in spikes and blades of crystalline water, but they didn't. Instead, I took control over the hand, my outward force instead forcing it open, the ice that once ensnared me forming around my legs and palms in permissive bonds. Almost like armor.

Roxxie scowled through a layer of cracked ice, "See, at least I don't cheat." Roxxie growled, magma oozing from the cracks in skin and forming an oozing spill on the floor. As I freed San, the pool of magma took shape, whipping towards us in a thin, searing stream that we attempted to duck under, San slashed across the stomach as I tumbled, battered by the icy floor.

Sweat broke in drops from my forehead, and I pushed my bangs out of my face, my other hand on a patch of ice, horribly disorientated. Tendrils of heat swept around Roxxie in swirling, prowling strings of heat, ready to strike.

"Cyrus!" Slenda dashed through the streams, bashing Roxxie with her stone shovel before pulling the handle around her neck. She kept her close enough that the griefer's fire singed her sweater and lit her hair, and the ice spread to her skin, but she remained stoic.

"Get her!"

"Slenda, you b— urk!" The ex-admin jerked the pole of the shovel, forcibly cutting her off and letting loose chips of crushed ice and magma, "Kill her! Even if you have to kill us both, just don't let her crash!"

I let the ice surround my arms, my forearms becoming icy spires whose shining edges formed blades, the edges polished as steel. Creating them felt as simple as slipping on a glove, I thought. I took one step, then another, then ran. I had this! I could take her down!

As I ran, a pixel of magma broke away from the stirring blocks of Roxxie's body, landing in my hair. I ignored it, deciding I would put it out after I delivered a blow to Roxxie, but then something changed. The ice on my arms was receding, melting. What didn't clatter to the floor seemed to disappear, my body no longer able to control it. I tripped, skidding across the ground until I fell at Roxxie's feet, gazing up from my incredibly small place below. Fire and ice trickled in a shower, my body switching between each, fire, then ice, then fire, too rapidly for me to use them. I might as well have had no power at all.

The fiery intensity of her right side at full power before me, she raised the molten limb once more, barely held back by Slenda, gritting smoke-pouring as she brought it downwards, finally in a position to take me out. To do the thing she'd be waiting to do since Weebtown.

"Don't worry Cy, I got you!"

The shrill voice came from somewhere behind me, and I looked to see a handful of TNT blocks hurtling towards the three of us, San behind them in a pitching stance.

I cried out in protest but the magma and TNT collided, the heat lighting them, filling the room with light and the overpowering CRUNCH sound that a handful of TNT brings, deafening me as we were all flung in different directions. Stone slammed against my back as I bounced off a back wall, my body crumpling to the icy floor. Light now filtered through the crumbling ceiling, the daylight of the crater how filling the entirety of the room, the face in the middle shining all except for the two pits of its eyes.

Forcing myself onto my elbows, I raised myself from the floor, looking once more at the face. I began to recognize it. I wondered if it knew everything would happen, if that's why the eyeless face in the dark gave Roxxie her second mod.

"S- Sorry!" San laughed from somewhere unseen, pulling away my eyes, "Didn't mean to hit you guys!"

I looked around, my eyes finding Slenda, hanging limp on a stone outcropping near the entrance; Roxxie, deflated, laying against the wall opposite from me; but no sight of San.

"San?"

"Down here!" Her voice responded. It was calling out from the lava moat.

I popped open one of the health restoration potions from my jacket, counting them as I sifted through my inventory. Just two and a defense potion, I could swear I had more. I downed a few gulps of each before heading over to San, my broken bones snapping into place as I got to my feet, then crouched at the edge. She was dangling off the sandstone edge, a single hand holding her upright while her other hand stayed pressed firmly against her stomach. I figured her arm was hurt, or broken. A snarky retort was the first thing that wanted to leave my lips, but I kept it in, knowing I would have time to say it later. And if not, that I'd make time. I grabbed her arm, her palm sliding down to mine.

San's hand was covered in sweat, and I was just barely able to keep hold of it. I pressed my hand against the sheet of the floor, cracking it, trying to take Roxxie's mod. To let the ice of my hand bond with the ice of the floor and hook me in place. But no luck. It was as if Roxxie's ice had vanished the moment San's hand met mine. I couldn't even create a thin layer of frost to stick our hands together. I'd have to pull her up myself.

"San, you need to use both hands!"

Her face was strained with stress, but not panic as she looked down at her folded arm. She seemed more afraid of disappointing Slenda than she was of dying. "I, I can't-!"

"Well you need to find a foothold or start climbing up or something!"

The two of us writhed, I trying to pull her up, to swing her, to use her legs to push her way up, all to no avail. Just as I felt we'd began to make some headway, I heard the sound of us cracking behind me.

"Cyrus-!"

I glanced over my shoulder, gasping at the form that was casting a growing shadow over her. Roxxie hung in the air suspended by a handful of crystalline limbs, her real legs dangling, one of them limp. In one hand, she held my defense potion, which she drank with a self-righteous grin. Waves of ice pushed from the ground, carrying a health potion up her leg and into her hand. Drinking the potion, she retracted two of her legs, pointed like stakes, bringing them into the air above us like a spider rearing up to strike its prey.

San exhaled stiffly, and opened the arm that she was holding against her abdomen. Her hoodie was torn, a hole into her inventory open, only held together by her arm. She let the stacks upon stacks of TNT fall freely from her, spilling into the distant heat below.

I gazed in horror at the creeper girl, her determination, the face that was normally so distant and bright now curled into a spiteful smirk, ready to accept death if it meant saving us.

A flash of white enveloped the four of us as ground erupted all around, the explosive force hitting me like a swift punch to every part of my body at once. The TNT blocks shattered the floor below us, sending us all upwards, forwards, and backwards. I brought up my arms around my face and pinned my eyes shut, bricks and air and fire buffeting me as I was sent flying into the air like I was in a broken lifeboat, prey to the explosives' current. I flew through what used to be the roof, unable to see anyone else, hear anything, feel anything but rushing air and heat as I sailed upwards overcome by momentum. I couldn't tell whether my eyes were open or closed, but I suddenly came to see blue sky spinning around me and beige earth spinning in opposition, both moving impossibly fast around me as up and down ceased to exist.

I used my mod, willing to take whatever it would give me, my flailing arms shooting ice in all directions. I didn't know when I'd touched her ice, maybe a sheet had collided with my body during the explosion, but I didn't care. I covered myself in it, created pillars of it, tried to blast at the earth in hopes that it would slow my descent, anything that had a slight chance of saving me.

Something about the shape of the ice chunk I'd created caught the air, slowing down my spin just enough for me to rationalize, to find a spot in the ground where there was already a wide ice sheet. I focused on it, forcing it upwards towards myself, hoping that I could catch myself, only to crash through it and explode to the earth.

I was thrown out of the frigid escape pod as it shattered against the sand, sending me tumbling across the sand only to finally come to a stop against a shallow bank of sand. Inborn bruises could be felt all over my body as my breath fogged the dry desert air, my bones chilled while my skin toasted on the sand. I pulled my scarf out of my inventory, throwing it on out of instinct, though I knew it certainly weren't ideal. None of this was.

Looking down at my arms, scraped and bruised by the impact, I took my scarf and tore it into two long straps, fastening one around each arm. Whether or not they did something, the fact that my bandaged arms now matched Roxxie's made me feel somehow stronger. Maybe they just looked cool.

Something shifted in the sand behind me, and I flinched away, scurrying across the sand only to see a covered face and single golden eye pop out from behind the cover of some desert ruins. "You okay? You look like you've been shot! But like… You were the bullet!"

The sight of the thief was more than a relief, and I crawled closer, springing to my feet so that I could hug him.

VF quickly shook off the hug, pulling the brim of his hat over his eyes. "Um? Okay, you seem happy to see me…" He looked up at the pyramid's tip, and my eyes followed his. The upper half of the structure had been completely blown off, the jewel of the desert now replaced by pillars of swirling smoke and fire. Suddenly, I remembered where I was, remembered San.

"So what the heck did you guys do?"

I grabbed VF by the shoulders, "Did you see where San and Slenda landed?!" I questioned, not realizing I was shaking him, "San was the one that blew everything up—"

"I figured that out." VF nodded.

"—But I fell all the way over here, did you see where she landed? IF she landed?" I prodded. He shook his head, and I let my hands drop from his shoulders, looking to the pyramid once again. Staring through the smoke, I hoped to see San, poking her head out of the smoke. Instead, I saw a creature, wrapped in a shell of ice.

The smoke began to clear around the heart of the temple, shrinking around Roxxie's inhuman form, the ice crystals receding into her arms, legs, and hair, her eyes wild and white amidst a sharpened silhouette. Like a doll made of broken glass. Even with the ice retracted, her entire body frosted with white as if she just came out of a blizzard, her silhouette still not quite right.

She held Slenda in the crook of her arm, her body limp, and her eyes were locked on me. Her frozen arm started to steam, the icy sheet peeling away like an insect's shell, the arm beneath dripping with bright orange light. I brought up my arms, trying to create fire of my own, only for frail gusts of chilled air to spill from my palms.

"I just wanted to fight fire with fire… Crap."

I looked to VF, who had already tiptoed behind a desert pillar, white knuckling its edge. "Roxxie said she took out the RPers you were bringing, how long until they can respawn and make it back here?"

VF pointed to the line of jungle trees that served as the pyramid's backdrop, "Our server is just on the other side of this biome line, if she griefed them they should be back in a matter of minutes, if they aren't already!"

I nodded. It was the first piece of good news I'd heard all day. Looking up at Roxxie, I felt suffocated, but took a deep breath. Icicles burst across my skin, tearing the sleeves from my jacket, forming bulky shapes like the arms of a polar bear, wrapped in icy fur.

Roxxie wound up her arm and threw it forward, a thick beam of lava bursting from it as if she'd broken a dam and let hundreds blocks of magma come rushing forward, rocketing towards me. VF ran from the scene, ducking behind a distant dune while I stood my ground, focusing on my hands, knowing full well I'd be sent back to my spawn if this didn't work.

I shoved my arms forward, the icy limbs smashing and reforming together to create a spear of ice that shot forward the same as Roxxie's, the space between my arms becoming the exit tunnel for a frigid bullet train. I planted a foot behind me, which sank into the sand. The sheer pressure was like trying to hold a building upright, the ice rushing forward, bursting against the flood of heat.

The two beams collided, becoming one solid pillar of force as they fought one other, flames, magma, and ice blasting outwards in waves from the point of impact. Any small change in Roxxie's trajectory was reflected in my own stance, throwing my trembling arms that I just barely managed to hold in place. It hurt just as much as if she'd hit me head on, though I was sure she felt the same.

The magma waned, my ice carving a tunnel through the beam and nearly driving through Roxxie. Roxxie pulled her arm away, tumbling sideways on the pyramid's ruined top, face twisted In disgust, flame consuming her flesh as the ice peeled further away.

With a moment of reprieve, I took one of the two bottles of health potion and began chugging, hoping to finish it before Roxxie readied her next attack, though I had no such luck. In a single breath she'd blasted forward, her body like a comet with a screaming trail of death, her curses becoming the hiss of a burning arrow. With no time to react, I thrusted my arm forward as if trying to punch her away, a flurry blasting from my arm that hid within it thin shards of ice which broke through the flaming barrier and caught Roxxie in the side. She crashed into the sand at my side carrying an agonized scream, her body flung across the stinging silt the same way mine had. I looked behind me, seeing a small impact trail she'd made in the sand, then at my feet, where the broken bottle that once held my health potion lay.

I made my way across the sand, though only walked a few blocks before a churning, billowing form rose from the sand before me. Smoke and combustion distorting her left side with waves of heat, while the other shone blindingly, like glass in front of a spotlight. Just above the layer of frost were frozen spikes, covered in black cracks. Just as the rest of her skin. She pointed a sharp eye towards me, a crack running through its center.

The griefer grabbed her leg, still twisted, and froze it in place. She grunted through gritted teeth, her body moving erratically, the process far less than painless. The ice was no longer just her weapon, it was her crutch.

Slenda began to wake up again, gazing up from the stony crater at the scene. She grabbed the blistering cold of Roxxie's frozen limb, wincing as if it stung to touch, but held on anyway.

"Roxxie, please—"

Her sister swatted her hand away, burning her with her flaming touch, her eyes filled with cold, burning hatred. She then turned those eyes to me, kicking her sister into the sand behind her. I formed two barriers of ice on my arms, charging towards her without a plan, without a battle cry, without anything, my feet aching with each sandy kick.

I swung an arm forward, expecting nothing but to make contact with Roxxie's face, to knock her out, to kill her, only for her molten claw to catch the impact, holding it in place as white hot talons sank into what I once considered my shield. The heat cut through the icy shield like butter, searing my arm just as I brought my other arm towards her in an icy punch.

The ice shattered weakly against the frigid armor of her face, which sprouted icy spikes as if animal instinct, slicing my arm.

"No," Roxxie said simply, "You don't get to win this fight."

I pulled my hand free from the icy spikes, copying the magma that still held my arm and letting it flood around the length of my free limb. I slammed the hand against her face, only to be met with the churning mass of magma she'd summoned to cover that side.

Flinching, I screamed, "We don't want to fight! We're trying to help you!" But she only laughed.

Still holding my arm in her claw's grip, she whipped me into the air like a ragdoll, sending my world into brutal, spinning convulsions before clubbing me over a blocky outcropping of stone. She bashed be against sand, then sandstone, then threw me like a broken toy, my body crashing against some ruins. Dust fell around me like rain, but I could see Roxxie's shape clearly in the haze. Burning, glimmering. It would be an amazing sight if it wasn't someone trying to kill me.

Slenda cried out again, doubled over the sandy mound in where they first impacted, still unable to stand. I wondered if she was injured too, "PLEASE! ROXXIE!"

The griefer spun around, planning her frozen limb in the sand, "PLEASE WHAT?! GIVE UP MY FREEDOM FOR YOU? GIVE YOU EVERYTHING AGAIN?"

Roxxie brought a thick, molten palm above her head, the flames at her feet jumping around her, forming into the shapes of gnashing, biting mobs, "FAT CHANCE, YOU, YOU—" The paw sharpened, straightened, and in that same second, shattered, Roxxie sent screaming into the sand, "—AAAGH!"

It was a powerful blast of electricity, a laser, had commanded the air, refusing to let her harm us. As if Notch himself had chosen to teach her a short, sharp lesson.

Roxxie winced, hiding her hand in the pit of her opposite side, sheathing it. Steam poured from it as she iced her injury shut. Though the three of us had yet to understand what was happening, Slenda and I seemed to share the realization that we'd gained the upper hand. At first I had thought one of the cracks had finally taken her, but the hole was filled with open air, not some portal to the void. A green beam lingered there, dying in fading streaks like a dried up stream. She wasn't crashing, she was shot.

She spun around, her eyes spraying fire unlike before. They spilled a raging blue-white, sending the air around her rippling in waves, though they seemed to splinter off into strange directions, like white-blue cracks instead of flames.

"YOU DID THIS, YOU—!" She cried, believing I was the only one who could harm her. She stomped forward, then ran, her eyes filled with unholy rage, "YOU BAKA!"

Roxxie skidded to a stop. She clasped her unfrozen hand over her mouth, her flames receding to reveal a face of equal parts brown and pink, her cheeks like the branches of a cherry blossom tree. She pulled her hand away, staring in a confused rage at me, at Slenda, then at phantom thief. He'd emerged from his hiding place, standing proud on the ruin.

"My friends are here!"

Roxxie staggered, flames jumping in wild spurts from her back, as if not able to completely manifest, her fires as confused as she was, "What the _k- KUSOO_ did you do to me!" I looked on, just as bewildered until VF struck a confident pose, pointing to a distant dune.

Casting a glance behind me, I locked eyes with a pair of strangers perched on a sandy mound. One stood tall, well dressed with a green shirt and vest, his red curls tossed playfully by the desert breeze as he held a palm confidently forward. Pink hearts swirled from the ground he stood on.

The other modder wore a dark sweater and covered one arm with a strange half-cape, his eyes hidden under dark shades. Though I could not see the hidden arm clearly, it sparked with a strange green electricity. His friend's mod was not clear, but he was definitely the one who'd shot Roxxie.

"What in the…?"

"My friend **TFfan1** has the shockblast rifle! It's able to blast through anything with deadly accuracy. And, well…" Though his eyes retained their enthused gleam, VF's arms retracted behind him, his eye tracing the ground with some distain, "And **LVnintendonerd** 's otome mod… Which alters someone's mind and appearance to make them act like a girl in a weaboo dating sim…"

I shuddered, gazing up at the two standing on the cliff. I was apprehensive of the two, one a proud weaboo and the other an intimidating cybernetically enhanced sniper, but to be honest, I was relieved to know that there were still some mods out there that retained the simplicity of "a gun that kills you."

"Y- Yamero! I- I don't!" Roxxie's blush shone bright like a spotlight, almost as if her cheeks were drawn on with a bright marker. Her ponytail became a solid, orb-like flame, flickering playfully behind her head for a few moments. It seemed almost cartoonish at first, then the fire began to spread, crawling around her face. Engulfing it. Searing white light shot out from her face as blue-white flames consumed her broken body, her arm swinging in a dramatic arc as she cried out, "I DON'T LIKE YOU, BAKA!"

She sliced the air with her arm, the earth suddenly splitting in two. A wall of lava, like the burning blade of a giant, exploded from the ground, the earth between her and the modders becoming a craggy scar. The modders were vaporized. The wall of magma standing before me sent a sharp, jerking recognition through my body, and I scrambled backward, feeling impossibly small.

"Oh crap! She's… A tsundere!" VF cried, pulling the collar of his coat around his face as if it were a shield.

Slenda crawled towards him, "I thought the mod was supposed to make her harmless!"

"Anime isn't a perfect science!" The thief yelped, tripping off of the ruins in an attempt to flee. In an instant, Roxxie shot an arm forward, a solid white wall launching from her arm—more than a blizzard—consuming the ruins which he once hid behind, scorching him from the earth and nearly taking Slenda as well.

Frost settled on Slenda's hair, cold pricking her face. As for VF, only a sheared, icy ledge remained.

She then turned her eyes to me, the fire once more creeping across her face. The blue fire faded, she now crackled quietly with yellow flame and gentle frigid fog, her body mostly exposed. Her arm and leg stayed encased in their icy casts. As thick in some places as chainmail, the thick black lines dominated every surface of her body, dividing her eyes, shattering her midsection, fracturing her leg.

Her icy leg dragged limply along the sand, one arm broken by VF's companions and the other deformed by cracks. The space around her arm seeming to show several perspectives, shades, colors of the same arm. To my horror, I saw the blocks around her beginning to change as well. Sand blocks turning to dirt, then nether brick, sandstone turning to sponge.

Even though the cracks spread into the ground with her every footstep, even though they rippled through the air around her like the strange, spidery hairs, I stood my ground. The ice fell away from my arm, and I quickly replaced my shield and weapon of ice with a cloak of fire and burning claw, something stirring in me. Not confidence, but something colder.

This had to end somehow.

I looked around me, noticing the cracks that stretched above, to my sides, behind me. I was hanging over an abyss.

"Now," Roxxie breathed, her mouth's parts moved in different panels, different directions, different expressions. The world didn't know where she was, when she was, who she was. Her existence couldn't decide on itself. "We're… Leaving."

I dove forward, swinging with claws of ice, missing, then striking again. Though I managed to catch Roxxie in her burning shoulder, she brought her frigid leg to my stomach, throwing me off my balance, my claw melting around me. Before she could strike me again, I put up an icy shield, bashing her with it before creating a spear of ice that I jabbed into her side. Charging through her, I managed to push her into the sand, falling on top of her, my spear stuck in the sand.

The flaming maw of cracks became a glowing maze of teeth, and the ice from her leg sharpened, leaped, and wrapped around my legs. She grabbed my wrists with burning palms, seemingly melting the air around me, my mind grilled in the heat as my body blistered the cold.

Cackling, Roxxie pulled me closer, surrounding me in equal layers of fire and ice, agonizing heat and invasive cold each dominating their own parts of my body. I tried to summon the mods from my own hands, to choose just one, or even both to copy, but the harder I tried, the more pain I felt. Cracks began to spread across my hands.

Shadows moved in waves around us, splitting the sun's light. I tried to contort my neck, forcing my body to move so that I could look behind me. But it was no use. Soon enough however, I saw its shape drawn in the darkened sand. It was of the serpentine streams of magma. A dragon. Like the ones she'd created at Weebtown.

I couldn't aim for it. I doubted I had the strength to attack it. But maybe I didn't need to. I looked over to Slenda, some distance out of the range of the cracks, then at Roxxie. Abstracted, shattered. My body aching, and my own mod struggling against me, I forced ice through the ground, behind her, above us. Forming a curling beam of ice and frost. A serpent of my own.

"Fire… With fire…?" Roxxie snickered, expression broken into disjointed shards, "So many blocks colliding… Melting… Evaporating…" Shards that used to belong to her eyes, her cheeks, her ears, were filled with the image of her mouth, charred by fire, moistened with blood.

"CRASH!"

"No!" I cried, I craned its head towards us, aiming to impale, "I'm not dragging this out a second longer!"

Roxxie only laughed, her head moving in broken, jerky movements. My body shook. I was so consumed with the ideas of surviving, of ending her, of saving her, that I didn't realize that the sand was moving beneath us.

"Wh- What?!" Roxxie loosened her grip on me, reacting to something unseen beneath her. Before either of us could realize what was happening, an arm reached out from a sudden opening in the sand, craning around Roxxie's neck.

As the sand finally gave way beneath us, Roxxie was yanked backwards with incredible strength, giving me the opportunity to break away from her hold, falling with her into the sandy pit below. We lay there, raggedly breathing in limbo for a few moments, buried a few blocks away from each other in the sand.

"But… Who…?"

A pairs of arms hoisted me to my feet, both gruffly and tenderly, before wrapping around me in a short embrace.

San pushed the streams of blue hair, stained rust by sand and blood, out of her face. She exchanged a cocky grin, and I returned her a broken, thankful smile as she messed my hair, "You guys didn't think I'd let you go on without me, did you?"

"I thought you were dead!" I gasped, gazing in wonder at the creeper girl.

"I had a couple of water buckets in my inventory, what can I say?" She chuckled, pulling Slenda into the crook of her arm. I'd hardly realized she'd come down into the pit to join us, "I don't die that easily. Slenda says I'm not allowed to."

Handing my remaining healing potion to San, I watched as she threw her head back and quickly gulped it down, tossing her hair about as the thick scrapes on her body healed themselves shut, leaving only a heavily bloodied face and hoodie as evidence of her injuries. I didn't ask if she had lost her health potion, assuming she had lost them in the pyramid, though it didn't matter whether she did or not. She couldn't die. And now with both her and Slenda at my side again, neither would I.

As Roxxie growled, rising to her feet, San placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, nearly knocking me over, "I put explosive charges underneath the sand. You dinguses almost set them off early, but luckily, they're intact. They should be enough to take her out."

"H- How many charges are we talking here?!" I asked nervously, realizing San had very suddenly given us a solution, though I wasn't sure if it was one I liked.

"Enough." San smirked.

Roxxie stomped forward, fire changing from yellow, to blue, to white as she observed our confidence from afar. Like a scared animal ready to lash out at its protectors, fire lashed at the edges of her silhouette as cracks spread out in broken, spiraling wings from her body.

Suddenly, light and sound split the air. The ground in front of her was immediately burnt, sparking with a green electricity. Roxxie growled at the modders on the cliff above us, the return she'd feared coming sooner than all of us would have expected. No way out.

Roxxie struck out at us with a burst of ice, tossing Slenda into the air and striking one of the modders, then throwing a thick arm of fire towards me. I put my arms out, creating no fire and no ice. But I quickly realized I didn't need them.

The fire that flooded my sight, my body, my mind, quickly became painless, my hands stuck out in the heat like hands ready to be pushed into a glove. Copying it as she attacked me. Owning it.

I took the stream of fire in my hands, now a tether between us, and threw it upwards, whipping Roxxie into the air.

And like a whip, I brought the stream of lava back over my head, then whipped it against the cracked earth. Roxxie screamed as the ground fell through below her, below both of us. I threw an arm behind me to knock San away, the thin icy limb lashing her, throwing her into the sand. In that moment, I didn't question that I was able to use the ice as well.

Time seemed to slow as the blocks of sand below us broke to reveal a red bedrock. Fire splashed TNT indiscriminately, boldly, consuming it in places like waves on a beach as Roxxie impacted. We hung in that moment, above the white blocks, above the light and the sound. And then that moment ended.

My broken body was thrown into the air amidst the light and sound, senseless for a moment. Then I could see her, and I pulled her in with an icy claw. Parts of both of us were lost in the explosion, though I did not look nor did I care. I pulled the frigid cord, bringing myself towards Roxxie. She did the same, our hands meeting, each filling with our own fire and ice.

She was unrecognizable, but two fires burned in the cracks where her eyes used to shine, burning white with hatred, with passion. With her desire for ultimate freedom. I pushed back, my body consumed by force. Not force moving for me, or against me, but simply force that tugged and shoved and jerked in every direction, refusing to be contained.

We rose higher.

Roxxie tightened her grip, her fire surging against me, the cracks spreading across my skin. I flinched for a moment, looking for San and Slenda below, but this only made her angrier. She wanted my attention. She wanted everything. Any small falter in focus allowed her fire and the cracks to consume more of my arms. Cracks united and pieces of my body flaked and broke off, expelled at impossible speed, as they did from her. Pieces of what was once considered human came away in chips, scraps, flung to the atmosphere.

"Give up!" I screamed in my mind, "End this!" But my mouth couldn't work. It let out a roaring scream as we continued to soar, the world below us shrinking. I could see the pyramid behind her, each tier disappearing until we finally passed its top, soaring above it, above the jungle tree line, shooting towards the clouds. I couldn't tell where my arms were, or hers, all I could feel were our essences smashing against each other, like water and magma rushing together into a steaming, craggy chaotic mixture. All I could do was push, and I kept pushing until everything around us seemed to give way. And in that instant, that terrifying void of an instant, I realized that there was no longer a sky or a planet below us.

The world beyond the shards of ice and fire and light that spilled from us was nothing but black. There was form, obscured form, somewhere in the dark. There were black grids like scaffolding, the lines about a block apart, like some kind of blank template for the world. Behind it, only more black. And a presence. The void was indecisive, weak, and sometimes flickered back to reality, back to Thieves' Desert and Giant's Way, but only for an instant.

We were in the void. We were crashing.

Pieces of Roxxie drifted naturally into the void, splitting and migrating like dead leaves in water. I looked at my arms, and saw the same. It was like I was made of shredded paper.

My mouth opened as I tried to speak, tried to beg her to stop. Beg her to look at the world around us. But all that came out was a blurred mess of sound and senses, like I was speaking underwater. Roxxie only grew hotter, her energy bursting around me, threatening to consume me. There was no joy in her malice, no smile on her face. Because she had no face. There was only anger, fear, and the ragged shape that it took. Shreds of her body flew around her like a flurry of confetti. If I continued, we would both crash, ended by the void.

The world flashed around us again, and I saw the ground for a moment. Wished for it. And I felt a decision made among the broken parts of my consciousness. They came to one, simple conclusion.

If we continued to clash, we would stay there, or die. If one of us let go, then one of us might make it out. Maybe both.

I released my grip, let my arms fall limp, my mod die out amidst hers. I let her take over everything in that moment, and in an explosion of heat, color, and light, the void went from a pure blackness to something beyond white, Roxxie vaporized in a burst of light.

My body was launched suddenly away from her—unable to ascertain any direction, not knowing up or down, just away from her in space—as I watched her last shreds disappear in the black clouds of the void. The last shards of her face, her body, the last tattered bits simply blown away in the windless air. And once she was completely gone, as was the light, the void returned to complete black. Featureless. Distanceless. Non-space.

Without senses, without a reference point, without air whipping my body, I traveled through the black. Unable to tell if I was truly moving at all.

For a few seconds, I wondered if I had crashed too. If this was it. If this was what the absence of respawn looked like. Maybe Roxxie had made it out, and I was now trapped here. It was like I was sitting in the palm of something impossibly large. And it would tell me where to go next. If I was worthy of returning to the world.

I fell like a brick from a pinprick of black in the sky, a world of sand pounding my body like a hammer before I could react. I didn't even think about using Roxxie's mod, because I wasn't sure I truly existed. All I could process was that I hit the ground. That for a moment, I had returned to life

 **"OOF!"**

…And that I died.

The blackness flashed before my eyes again, but only for a moment. Not staying. Pinpricks of light dotted my vision, their edges moving. Then, they all rushed towards me, as the blue sky stretching before me once more. Light stung my eyes for a moment, and I recoiled. It took me a moment to realize that I was. Not in the middle of the spawn area. I was in a bed, surrounded by miniaturized wooden planks and sand.

Broken blocks floated into my sleeves, entering my inventory as I sat warily upwards. I was surrounded by broken, burnt wood in a crater not unlike those at Giant's Way. The shape of a woman, topped with a head of thick, messy hair, hung over me. Acting on reflex, I flinched away from her before she could touch me. Still in fight mode.

"Bernadette?" I mumbled, straining my eyes. No. It wasn't Bernie. This person smelled awful.

"Bloody Nether, you're a lucky one, aren't you?" The rotted woman laughed, stepping back from me. My tattered clothing and bandaged arms had been replaced, my jacket and scarf restored by whatever process caused one to respawn. I spoke apprehensively, my voice shaky, "Is this Vanillakings…?"

The zombified waitress shot me a look, then let out a bewildered laugh, "Eh wot? Nah, you're in Thieves' Desert!"

Gawking about the destroyed speakeasy, I saw patrons and owner alike scraping up wood and sandstone, bits of broken glass and ice blocks. Weak fires burned the tops of walls and the ground above, beginning to go out.

"You happened to be in one of the only beds that survived the fire… And the ice," She shrugged, grinning with a smile of offbeat amusement that reminded me why she was San's sister, "Odd day it's been!"

"Wh- What do I do now?" I breathed, staring at her in disbelief. Dusty swept a pile of wood planks into a corner, groaning.

"Feck, just go home!"

My eyes flashed between the zombie girl who greeted me at my bedside, to the wall around us, then the distant sky. My foot met the ground, I moved away from the bed, then exploded towards the clouds.

Wind split around me as I soared through the air, pixels of condensation moving across me in waves as the ground below me spun at an incredible speed, the jungle border and the pyramid that acted as it's zipper growing as it ran at me from the horizon. I lost height, blasted the ground again, cracks forming around my hands, and flew faster. Towards Giant's way, towards San and Slenda.

Another shot, another boost of height, and they began to come into sight. The two forms, one purple and one green, holding each other with VF and the other modders around them.

The ground neared, and I tucked in my limbs, my body spinning, bounding forward across the sand as ice shot from my body to cushion the impact.

For some reason I expected the landing would be easy, that San or Slenda would somehow find a way to catch me. I zipped past them and skipped across the ground like a pebble across a lake, making hundreds of short, sharp scrapes across the ground. My velocity and point of view seemed random, sent into wild fluctuations as I tried to cling to the earth, finally managing to anchor myself. I came to rest in a crater of my own making, an icy mound of three walls that surrounded me, created by arms that wanted nothing more than to hold onto the ground. To be still.

As my spinning head came to something reminiscent of rest, I pushed myself on torn sleeves and tried to open dust-filled eyes to the world around me, only to see two figures suddenly appear and, just as suddenly, dive onto me. They surveyed my wounds, cupped my face, squeezed my hands, both of them frantic and caring in their own ways. I folded my arms around them both. Fires died around us as the spires of ice Roxxie had made began to crumble, the effects of her mod vanishing. Everything tethered to her beginning to vanish.

Roxxie was gone, and I'd failed to save her. Slenda looked at me with begging eyes, blubbering with malformed questions. I tried to say that I was sorry, that I truly couldn't do anything. But it didn't matter. She buried her head in my chest, and San encircled us with broad arms. She didn't press me. She didn't have to. They seemed to just be thankful that I made it out. This nameless modder they'd only met a few weeks ago.

A black crack hung in the sky far above us, the only thing left of Roxxie. But we still held each other.

The desert felt empty, devoid of ice and pitted with meaningless craters, but cradled us as we cried together. The sun coming through the jungle trees behind us began to darken and disappear, turning orange as the sun finally set on the three of us and the walls of ice that surrounded us.


	10. Epilogue

Rearranging my numbing legs, I glanced at the landscape below my window. Distant bodies, miniscule in sight, moved across the monument below, VF and the other RPers still hard at work repairing the damage done to Giant's Way. Slenda had been doing her best to help, despite the operators urging her to stay outside of the server. She would visit the worksite almost every day, only held back by San, who dragged her back to bed and forced her to rest on the weekends. I tapped my pen absentmindedly on my paper, gazing across the plains of green leaves that surrounded me, shoring the beige expanse, sighing in a kind of relief.

The server's name was "Super Utopia Turbo 2.5 HD: Final Mix; A Fragmentary Passage" and was every bit as contradictory and foolish as it sounded, but I loved it, (even if I never said the full name out loud). The admins and those under them were dedicated passionately to the creation of gigantic structures, green hills and power reactors alike, both the gorgeously pastoral and the garishly anime. Most of it was unfinished, entire swaths of land filled with nothing but scaffolding and wool, but there was no denying that the admins had a passion what they were doing, even if they always seemed to go about it the hard way.

The operators of Thieves' Desert, on the other hand, were still infuriated at us, and, though they were used to troublemakers in their server, recommended that we leave once the repairs to the server's landmarks were completed. VF and his friends tried to vouch for us, but it was hard to argue that we weren't responsible for the destruction of the server's PvP neutral zone, one of the most egregious crimes possible against a respected RP server. As Slenda worked on repairs and San explored our new home, there was little left for me to do but be alone with my thoughts. One of the admins of the new server, **LVnintendonerd** , gave me a blank book, encouraging me to record the events of our journey. I hesitated, but for some reason, he insisted, placing the book in my hands before I could refuse. I suppose it was fitting, the same admin who insisted on creating monuments and huge maps with the resources of a survival server was also a man who needed little reason to be motivated about something, perhaps expecting the same of me. Needless to say, I've since accepted the offer, and have been recording a story of my own. It was a strange setting for me, I suppose. High above the shadowy forest floor, recounting my past like some legendary hero. It felt like something grander than me, but, at the same time, I felt like it was something I'd earned.

Facing my place, I put my pen back to paper. I was near completion, or, rather, the present (I'd hate to say of course that my story was complete).

…

The sun had long set by the time San and Slenda helped me to my feet. My body was aching, and I rose too quickly so that my head started to swim, but I simply let myself fall forward into their arms. San patted me hard on the back, which stung more than it should have, but I grinned through the small pain. I was glad just to be back with them.

Looking behind us, I had only now noticed that the ice I'd created was still there. I held out my hand, and a flame sprung into it. I still had both of Roxxie's mods, even though I'd touched San. Something which always seemed to make my mod… Glitch out, for lack of a better word. Nothing changed about San, I thought, but I'd gone to the void. Beyond the edge of the world, to where no player was meant to go. To where we got our mods. Had my body changed somehow?

Beneath the fire, I noticed a shadow on my palm, like a black string. It spread. I shook my hand, the fire flickering sputtering out of life along with the crack on my palm. Slenda stared at my palm with empty eyes, but San put an arm around her, jerking her vision away.

"Hey, if Cyrus still has her mod, That means there's something left of her after all!"

She squeezed her tiny partner, nuzzling into her cheek, but all Slenda could muster was a pathetic whimpering noise, wiping her eyes with her coat. When the sweater came down however, her expression was replaced by a weary smile.

…

I tried to keep my mind on writing even when San entered the room, although that was probably the greatest challenged I'd encountered yet. The door swung dramatically in front of her as it always did, the puffy white collar of her new hoodie flapping about her as she strode in with heavy boots, quickly closing the short space between the door and me.

She usually did something like this, romping about someone else's room before shooting out again, using the curvature of the room as a kind of launch pad. But this time, she skidded to a stop in front of me, cooing with interest as she snatched the tome from my hands, sending my pen as well as several loose pages of notes flying into the air. I shot her an irritated look, but she returned an expression that I thought was unusual. It seemed more empathetic than anything, as if she felt bad for me.

"Is this what's kept you locked up in your house all these weeks? Looks like you and Slenda have both been trying to work during your time off!"

The creeper girl examined it closely, assuming poses of false introspection as she held the book at different angles, though mostly upside-down. I wondered if she knew how to read at all.

I let out a deep sigh, exchanging a weary look with her, only for her to stick her tongue out, continuing to read while keeping me at an arm's length.

"Oh heck, this isn't bad. A bit on the long side… But you definitely seem to have a talent!"

My bed creaked as I lunged for the tome, trying to grab it from her hand as she dodged my pursuit, blowing raspberries as she bounced across bookshelves and knocked over plants. Even after I pinned her on the bed, getting the book became a flurried struggle, getting a hold of San like getting a hold of a wet cat.

I grabbed at her, getting a handful of fluff rather than book, "I'm willing to take criticism-!" I gasped, leaping at her hand, "From anyone but you!"

We crashed to the floor together, my body tumbling over San's as she slammed into the hard wood, the book flopping out of her hand. I snatched it, sticking my tongue out at her.

She side-eyed me from the floor.

"It would work better in third person too." She suggested, crossing her arms, "And with less comparing people to mobs and making metaphors about made-up stuff. I mean, what the heck is an amusement park? Or a cannon?"

I glared at San for a few moments. It was true that I made references to things outside of the world, and I wasn't completely sure where those metaphors came from, but that was just part of my process. I looked down at the book, puzzling for a moment. Grabbing my pen from the floor, I sought out to prove a point. "Third person…" I scoffed.

 _Leering at her, Cyrus snapped open the tome, scratching a short third-person description within, hoping that it would turn out badly enough to prove her wrong. His confidence in his strategy wavering as his words trailed the page, he would soon place the book in her hands. As frustrating as she could be, Cyrus couldn't deny that he loved someone reading what he wrote. Even if they were a dingus about it._

"Hmm... Not bad." San said, smiling. She rolled over onto her stomach, refusing to rise from the floor. I brought the book close, lending a sharp eye to the page. My expression faded as my shoulders deflated, "Crap..." I scratched his head with his quill, "You're right, it's not bad."

 _Then I took the book from Cyrus! I sat on the gloomy dingus and started writing stuff while he tried to throw me off (and failed). He acts like he's getting all annoyed but he's smiling for a change! Can't fool me. :)_

With a huff, I stole back the book, holding it face-up in my hands for a few moments before settling on the edge of my bed. San seemed to choose her voyeurism over her curiosity for once, watching me as I scrawled in another short section.

…

The two admins of the nearby server, "Super Utopia Turbo 2.5 HD: Final Mix; A Fragmentary Passage" came to our strange huddle. One was the modder with the dating sim mod, the other the cyborg sniper. Though the sniper stood stoic, almost shyly at the other admin's side, the black cape slung over his left shoulder hid a powerful metal arm, of which I'd already learned to fear.

 **LVnintendonerd** , the curly-haired weeb, stepped forward, respectfully bending himself over one arm, his eyes fixed on me the whole time. Some hearts trickled from the ground at his feet, but he swatted them away like bugs.

"We heard you all could be in need of a place to stay. Now, our server is a bit of a… Mess, to say the least. But we'd be more than happy to take you."

Slenda pulled her head from San's chest, smiling weakly as she breathed a quick "thank you" and sunk back into her partner. LV eyed the creeper girl, half-covered in her own blood and draped in what had to be 25% of her original hoodie. She pushed her hair from her face, grinning wildly at him, which caused him to flinch. The admin tiptoed around her, speaking quietly in my ear.

"She's, uh... Coming with you too?" LV asked, sticking a thumb in San's direction. I nodded, and he cocked his head a specific way.

I asked if that was a problem. He took a moment to fix his shirt before speaking, wiping invisible debris from his shoulders. Each second of the exchange seemed to drag on longer than the last. The admin returned with a strange expression, accompanied by a long whining sound poorly imitating the lead-up to an answer.

"Is that a problem?" I repeated. By now San had taken notice of the conversation.

LV patted his legs, throwing his response out with a motion, "She's house-broken, right? Like, she's not gonna go around the server drawing dicks on signs and-"

"Now don't give me any bright ideas!"

…

Rumbling came from trunk of the treehouse, throwing my pen in my hand and forcing me to remove it from the page. It felt as if a colossal beast was storming up the trunk, heavy limbs slamming against the bark as it clawed its way upward. As the trunk groaned, San's face flushed, her eyes fixated on the window at my back. I turned to see **TFfan1**. The cyborg sniper who'd helped them fight Roxxie, perched on the windowsill like some predatory bird. Even under the shade of his tinted glasses you could tell he was staring directly at San, the cannon arm—that was seemingly longer than his body—hanging at his side, glowing with a menacing green light. His face worked into a tight grimace, his cannon leveled at the window, at us.

"There you are, creeper! I cannot, will not, let you get away this time!"

Well, really just San.

I paced backwards, plastering a falsely welcoming grin across my face, putting a heavy arm around San's shoulders. She tried to wriggle away, "San. What did you doooo?"

Though I used to doubt that San felt guilt, her face seemed pale, her eyes dyed with something akin to fear.

"I- I didn't do anything! At least, not anything bad, I thought." She stammered, trying to pull downwards out of my arms, as the cannon glowed brighter. Brighter.

"YOU PERMENANTLY DAMAGED MY PERFECT SCALE MODEL OF MIDGAR YOU EXPLOSIVE HARLOT!"

San stared at her feet. She seemed as if she'd genuinely tried to stay on her best behavior… But, "A pizza always looks more aesthetically pleasing with a slice taken out of it! It adds dimension and realism, I just wanted to change it so you could see—"

"THE SECTOR SEVEN PLATE THAT YOU CALL A "SLICE OF PIZZA" TOOK YEARS TO BUILD! GRANTED, IT IS MORE AESTHETICALLY PLEASING NOW… VASTLY SO. BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE FILED A REQUEST FOR A CHANGE!"

"I'M SORRY!"

San quickly ducked under my arm as the admin fired, doing a reverse tuck and roll that sent her flying backwards through the door, leaving me to narrowly dodge the beam which singed the hair off my arm before disintegrating the blocks of my entryway, his beam carving a narrow tunnel through my house. Cursing to himself as he dashed across what was left of my bedside window and across my floor, he shouted "YOU STRUTLESS COWARD! YOU'VE SEWN THESE SEEDS WITH YOUR BLASTED IMPROVEMENTS AND YOU SHALL REAP THE WHIRLWIND!"

At least things weren't usually like this, I thought, sighing as I picked up a miniature block of wood planks. The admins weren't bad guys, just… Intense, for lack of a better word. Eccentric. And, in the cyborg's case, valid.

"CYRUS?!" I heard a voice call from outside, followed by the pounding of feet across quickly placed blocks, an alternating noise of wood and feet. Slenda soon appeared in my home's new entryway, her face melting from sorrowful shock to relief as she caught sight of me.

"Oh, thank Notch. I thought San had done something stupid and—"

"She did," I corrected, "But I'm alright."

A ragged sigh broke from Slenda as her shoulder's slumped, her brow pulling up in an understanding anguish. Rubbing her temples, she stepped into my room, her thick ponytail bobbing behind her as she walked. Her torn sweater had long been replaced by a purple tank and black cardigan. With her colorful top poking out from a dark cover, I couldn't help but think she looked like Roxxie.

"And she'd been doing so well, too..."

Slenda put a hand on my shoulder, hesitating for a moment before speaking.

You, uh… Been alright?" Slenda asked, gazing warily up at me, "Fine," I responded, "You?"

Slenda simply shrugged, offering a tired smile. I didn't pry, and I haven't tried to since the fight with Roxxie. She'd barely talked about that day since, and when it came up in conversation she tended to avoid it, and though I had my worries, I didn't want to make things worse. As much as we'd done for each other, I didn't know her well enough to make assumptions. Maybe she was grieving well enough on her own, or with San. It wasn't my place.

Before we could say much more, Slenda explained timidly that she just wanted to see if I was okay, and was glad that I was safe. I chuckled to myself, thinking, of course I'd be safe. Even if I died here, I could still respawn. Though, with a girlfriend who couldn't respawn and a sister who could never respawn again, I guess you could never be too careful. As she rounded the doorway, I called out to her, the curly ball of brown hair bouncing behind her head as she looked back at me.

"Hey, uh… If you ever need to talk about anything… Like, anything. You can talk to me, okay?"

Slenda's chest bobbed as if from a laugh, and she gave me a faded grin, saying "I appreciate the offer, Cy." Before nodding and going on her way. I felt empty, standing there in the middle of the floor, but I refused to let that take me over. Removing the book from my vest pocket and finding a comfortable spot on my bed, I looked to the leafy canopy of the jungle to bring color to my words, and once again began to write.

…

We each chose a small home, more like dorms than anything, and quickly went to place our things, San surprisingly the most eager to decorate. I've only seen fragments of the room through cracked doors and windows, but I can tell you with absolute certainty its contents; one double bed, a wall of bookcases, and a wall of TNT. Like two halves of an unsolvable whole. I could think of little to place in my room, and began to search through my inventory. I'd scraped up what I'd lost from my death at Giant's Way, though I neglected to truly search through it.

Wooden planks, in several varieties. Several paintings. Some dirt. And lots of sand. With a chuckle, I placed the painting, which spawned a beautiful seaside scene, and sat on the bed the admins had given me. It was so soft. I laid down, and, as if nothing had ever happened—as if I'd never nearly murdered a girl in the forest, as if I'd never gone to a strange server full of weebs and katanas and chaos, as if I'd never stopped a griefer and their mod of mass destruction, as if I never trekked across an endless desert filled with thieves, as if I never met a zombie waitress or a ghost thief, as if I never had the fight of my life and fell through the void back to the earth—I laid my head down, and I fell thoughtlessly to sleep. To rest.

My respawn point had been fixed.

…

Smiling at the words on the page, then at the hole in my home, I put the pen in its place and closed the book. I slid the book into place in my shelf, wondering where I would walk for the day. At the time, I had nothing more to add.


End file.
